Patient deaths: 1,062,564
Total vaccine doses distributed: 863,234,395
Patients whove received the first dose: 264,562,221
Patients whove received the second dose: 225,870,613
% of population fully vaccinated (both doses, not including boosters): 68%
% tied to Omicron variant: 100%
% tied to Other: 0%
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will not release its review of post-COVID-19-vaccination heart inflammation.
The CDC has been performing abstractions on reports of post-vaccination myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, submitted to theVaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
But the agency is saying that federal law prevents it from releasing the results.
The abstractions are considered medical records which are withheld in full from disclosure, the CDC told The Epoch Times in a recent letter, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request.
One of the exemptions in the act says that agencies can withhold materials that are specifically exempted from disclosure by statute, if that statute(i) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue; or (ii) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters to be withheld; and (B) if enacted after the date of enactment of the OPEN FOIA Act of 2009, specifically cites to this paragraph.
The CDC pointed to the Public Health Service Act, which was enacted in 1944, and says that vaccine injury reports and other information that may identify a person shall not be made available to any person except the person who received the vaccine or a legal representative for that person.
The information sought is available through the CDC websitewithout details that would identify patients, the agency also said.
The CDC said that it does not have a formal definition of abstraction but that it means the process of reviewing medical records, including autopsy reports and death certificates, and recording data in a database. Please note that this definition means that any abstracted data, because they originate from medical records, is also considered medical records, a CDC records officer told The Epoch Times in an email.
Refusing to release the data raises concerns about transparency, according to Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center.
The stubborn refusal of officials heading up federal health agencies responsible for protecting the public health to come clean with Americans about what they know about COVID vaccine risks is stunning, Fisher told The Epoch Times in an email.
Fisher noted that the CDC has funded electronic medical record systems that collect personal health information and that the agency shares the data with a number of third parties, such as contractors and researchers.
Yet, CDC officials are claiming they cannot release de-identified abstraction information curated from the medical records of individuals, who have suffered myocarditis or died after COVID shots? This looks and feels like a coverup of the true risks of COVID vaccines, Fisher said.
Fisher called for a congressional probe into what she described as the disturbing lack of transparency on the part of federal agency officials, who granted COVID vaccine manufacturers an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to widely distribute the vaccines in December 2020 and have recommended and aggressively promoted the vaccines for mandated use ever since.
In response to a separate Freedom of Information Act request, the CDC initially said that it did not perform any abstractions or produce any reports on post-vaccination myocarditis. That request was for reports betweenApril 2, 2021, and Oct. 2, 2021.
The agency alsofalsely said that a link between myocarditis and the messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccines was not known during that time.
A possible link between those vaccines, made by Pfizer and Moderna, became known in early 2021. Many experts now acknowledge the link is likely or definitely causal.
The CDC later issued a correction on the false claim, as well as the claim that the agency started performing a type of data mining on VAERS data as early as February 2021.
The CDC said in its correction that myocarditis abstractions began being performed in May 2021.
Notified that its response was false and asked to do a fresh search, the records office did not respond.
Appeals have been lodged in that case and after the more recent response withholding the records.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDCs director, said in a press conference in April 2021 that the agency had not detected a link between the vaccines and myocarditis. The basis for that statement remains unclear.
The refusal to provide the myocarditis abstractions is part of a pattern with the CDCand its partner, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The CDC still hasnt released the results of the data mining, to The Epoch Times, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), or a nonprofit called Childrens Health Defense. The agency also declined to provide results from a different monitoring system, V-safe, to a nonprofit called Informed Consent Action Network, which then sued the agency and just recently received the first tranche of data.
The FDA, meanwhile, has refused to release the results of a different type of analysis on the VAERS data, claiming it cannot separate the results from protected internal communications. The agency is also withholding autopsies conducted on people who died after getting COVID-19 vaccines, pointing to exceptions laid out in the Freedom of Information Act.
Along with Johnson, several other lawmakers are pressing at least one of the agencies to release the data, asserting that not doing so is illegal.
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Zachary Stieber covers U.S. and world news for The Epoch Times. He is based in Maryland.
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EXCLUSIVE: CDC Won't Release Review of Post-Vaccination Heart Inflammation - The Epoch Times
A new study has concluded what many Americans have long suspected: The Covid-19 pandemic has killed more Republicans than Democrats.
In a detailed examination of data from Ohio and Florida, the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, and that significantly more Republicans than Democrats have died from the virus since the introduction of vaccines in early 2021 to protect against the disease.
By cross-referencing voter registration data and mortality figures, the study found that excess death rates the number of deaths above pre-pandemic levels for registered Republicans were significantly higher than for registered Democrats after the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines.
If these differences in vaccination by political party affiliation persist, then the higher excess death rate among Republicans is likely to continue through the subsequent stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study, which was published in September, concluded.
The study found that death ratesfrom Covid-19 were only slightly higher for Republicans than Democrats during the early days of the pandemic, before vaccines became available. But by the summer of 2021, a few months after vaccines were introduced, the Republican excess death rate rose to nearly double that of Democrats, and this gap widened further in the winter of 2021. The sudden increase in the gap between Republican and Democratic death rates suggests that vaccine take-up likely played an important role, the study found.
A central narrative of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States has been Republican opposition to public health measures, particularly mandates to wear masks in public and vaccination requirements for employment and access to public places and public travel. That reflected a refusal by many conservatives, following the lead of former President Donald Trump, to take the pandemic seriously, choosing instead to treat Covid-19 as tantamount to the flu.
Despite the fact that more than 1 million Americans have died from the virus, many Republican political leaders, particularly in red states, refused to impose stringent public health restrictions during the pandemic, and criticized mask and vaccination mandates. That opposition led many Republicans to deny that the vaccines worked and to refuse to get the shots. In Florida, one of the two states included in the study, Gov. Ron DeSantis transformed himself into a national Republican leader and possible presidential contender by leading the right-wing charge against public health mandates.
The partisan divide over vaccination developed almost as soon as Covid-19 vaccines became available in early 2021, and it continued to widen. By September 2021, 92 percent of registered Democrats had been vaccinated, compared with only 56 percent of Republicans, according to a Gallup survey at the time.
But the National Bureau of Economic Research study provides some of the strongest evidence yet that the refusal of many Republicans to get vaccinated has made them much more likely to die from Covid-19. While those who have been vaccinated often still contract the virus, many studies have shown that people who have been vaccinated are much less likely to die from the disease.
There have been previous efforts to measure the impact on health of the partisan divide over Covid-19 vaccinations. But the National Bureau of Economic Research study offers a more detailed look at death rates in two states among Republicans and Democrats.
The study tracked 577,659 people who died in Ohio and Florida at age 25 or older between January 2018 and December 2021. It then linked those people to their 2017 Ohio and Florida voting records.
Between March 2020 and March 2021, excess death rates for Republicans in Ohio and Florida were 1.6 percentage points higher than for Democrats; but from April 2021 to December 2021 after vaccines became widely available the gap widened to 10.6 percentage points. The study found that the largest gaps in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats came in Ohio and Florida counties with low vaccination rates. By using county-level vaccination rates in Ohio and Florida, we find evidence that vaccination contributes to explaining differences in excess deaths by political party affiliation, even after controlling for location and age differences, the study said.
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The Right's Anti-Vaxxers Are Killing Republicans - The Intercept
Dear Doctors: There are vaccines available for quite a few bacterial diseases and infections, but we still dont have one to protect against strep throat. Is there a reason that the pharmaceutical companies have yet to develop such a vaccine, despite the obvious need for it?
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Strep's varitation make vaccine elusive so far The Examiner - Examiner
Tucker Carlson claims Americans were forced to take the COVID vaccine at gunpoint Media Matters for America
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Overview
In March 2021 the World Health Organization (WHO) made interim guidance available on best practices for undertaking vaccine effectiveness (VE) evaluations in Evaluation of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness: interim guidance, followed in July 2021 by an addendum addressing VE evaluations in the context of new variants of concern (VOC). That guidance still generally applies to carrying out VE evaluations. Nonetheless, in the past year, several factors have arisen that indicate the need for a second addendum to the interim guidance, including lessons learned from the many VE evaluations already conducted to date, waning of protection, Omicron emergence, and the increasing proportion of the population with hybrid immunity. This addendum addresses some of the methodological aspects of VE evaluations that have been learned during the past year, as well as those that have become relevant in the current epidemiological setting of the COVID-19 pandemic. For some of the COVID-19 vaccine methodology issues there are still insufficient data to make a recommendation, in which case different options for approaching VE evaluations are presented.
Questions should be directed to[emailprotected].
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Aim is for commercialization in U.S., Europe, Japan
Washington University in St. Louis has licensed the rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize its proprietary COVID-19 nasal vaccine in the United States, Europe and Japan to Ocugen Inc., a U.S.-based biotechnology company.
A nasal vaccine for COVID-19 based on technology developed at Washington University in St. Louis is on the path to becoming available in the U.S., Europe and Japan. The university has licensed the rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize its proprietary COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, Europe and Japan to Ocugen Inc., a U.S.-based biotechnology company focused on developing and commercializing novel gene and cell therapies and vaccines.
A nasal vaccine is thought to provide greater protection against the virus than current injectable vaccines, which help prevent severe illness and death but do little to prevent infections, especially as highly contagious newer variants continue to spread. The advantage of the nasal vaccine is that it delivers a boost to immunity in the nose and upper respiratory tract, right where the virus enters the body, thereby potentially preventing infections altogether.
Ocugen intends to work closely with U.S. government agencies tasked with pandemic preparedness and response to initiate clinical trials and manufacture the intranasal vaccine. The company also is interested in the potential for the nasal vaccine to be a universal booster, regardless of a persons previous COVID-19 vaccination history.
Despite the many challenges of a global pandemic, our accomplished, dedicated faculty have continued to push the boundaries of discovery, said Dedric Carter, PhD, Washington Universitys vice chancellor for innovation and chief commercialization officer. The licensing of the nasal vaccine technology highlights the culture of innovation were developing at Washington University. All of our facultys extraordinary efforts in research innovation are with the goal of translating insights from the laboratory into improvements in the health and lives of people in our communities and across the globe.
The Washington University nasal vaccine technology was previously licensed to Bharat Biotech International Limited in 2020 for development in India and limited parts of the world. This September, health authorities in India approved the vaccine for emergency use in that country, making it the worlds first intranasal vaccine for COVID-19 to be approved.
The investigational nasal vaccine was co-developed by Washington University scientists David T. Curiel, MD, PhD, the Distinguished Professor of Radiation Oncology, and Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine, of molecular microbiology and of pathology & immunology, with members of their laboratories. They started collaborating in early 2020, as the virus that causes COVID-19 first began its wildfire-like spread across the globe.
Curiel had long worked on using harmless, deactivated cold viruses called adenoviruses to deliver gene therapies for cancer and other diseases. Diamond, an expert in viruses and infectious diseases, was already studying the virus that causes COVID-19 in his laboratory, having obtained a sample from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the first weeks of the pandemic. Curiel and Diamond teamed up to create and test their adenovirus-based nasal vaccine for COVID-19.
In recent months we have seen COVID-19 continue to spread despite high levels of vaccination the U.S., Europe and Japan have achieved, Diamond said. Because the vaccine can be delivered directly into the nose, it is specifically designed to block infection at the portal of virus entry, and we believe it may help prevent transmission as well as provide protection against new COVID-19 variants.
Their early studies at Washington University showed that nasal delivery of this vaccine creates a strong immune response throughout the body, especially in the nose and respiratory tract. In animal studies, the nasal vaccine entirely prevented infection from taking hold in the nose and lungs suggesting that vaccinated individuals would be able to fend off the virus before it could multiply and cause an infection.
Another advantage to a nasal vaccine is that it doesnt require a needle, Curiel said. Many people who are hesitant to receive an injection are willing to inhale a vaccine. This vaccine also could be used to boost immunity in people who were previously vaccinated with any of the other vaccines. I think it could be very helpful in the ongoing effort to reduce SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission here in the U.S. and worldwide.
Added Shankar Musunuri, PhD, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Ocugen: Washington Universitys COVID-19 nasal vaccine technology has been shown to induce strong mucosal immunity with potential to reduce SARS-CoV-2 infection, transmission and the emergence of new variants. As the effort to end the pandemic focuses on effective booster options, Ocugen is excited about the potential for this vaccine to be a universal booster, regardless of previous COVID-19 vaccination history. We look forward to working with U.S., European and Japanese regulators to expedite development.
About Washington University School of Medicine
WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with 2,700 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the fourth largest among U.S. medical schools, has grown 54% in the last five years, and, together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits well over $1 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently within the top five in the country, with more than 1,790 faculty physicians practicing at over 60 locations and who are also the medical staffs of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals of BJC HealthCare. WashU Medicine has a storied history in MD/PhD training, recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.
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WHO has ranked South Africas vaccine regulatory system at a functional level of maturity, according to WHOs global classification system for national medical products regulatory authorities. This recognises that South Africa has a stable,well-functioning and integrated regulatory system to ensure the quality, safety, and effectiveness of vaccines manufactured, imported or distributed in the country.
WHO confirmed the countrys attainment of maturity level three (ML3)the third of four levels in the WHOs classification. Maturity level four (ML4) is the highest.
This achievement affirms South Africas trailblazing endeavour in health research. Beyond its technical aspects, this milestone carries real implications for peoples health. We cannot talk about better health care without quality medicalsupplies, said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. This is an important new step not only for South Africa, but for the region towards self-sufficiency in vaccines and medicines.
This rapid progress on vaccines regulation is a significant milestone for South Africa, the Southern African region and the continent. It is an important win for vaccine equity, as the country is a major manufacturer of medical products and thisregulatory milestone will help maximise the impact of the mRNA vaccine technology hub. said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.
We commend the tireless efforts of all those involved in ensuring the integrity and rigour of the health products registration processes. This achievement is testament to the role the regulator has played in ensuring that vaccines that are safe,efficacious and of a high quality are available in South Africa. SAHPRA will continue to be an agile and responsive African health products regulator, whilst working towards the aim of being a globally recognised as an enabler of access to safe, effectiveand quality health products said Dr Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela, South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) Chief Executive Officer.
In 2019, SAHPRA participated in WHO-supported self-benchmarking of its regulatory system and functions. Between July and August 2021, SAHPRA further refined and enhanced this self-benchmarking with WHO assistance.
In November 2021, WHO completed its benchmarking of SAHPRA, with a team of 19 international experts from 10 countries, which concluded that SAHPRA was required to address several gaps with regards to vaccines regulation. Recommendations were providedin the form of an Institutional Development Plan (IDP) for SAHPRA.
Between November 2021 and August 2022, SAHPRA made major progress in several areas including: staffing, quality management, establishing a framework for renewal of marketing authorization of medical products, and regulatory presence at ports of entry.
In September 2022, a subsequent WHO formal benchmarking mission concluded that SAHPRA had achieved ML3 for vaccines regulation.
SAHPRA is the fourth National Regulatory Authority (NRA) to become a ML3 regulatory authority for vaccines in the WHO African Region alongside Tanzania, Ghana and Nigeria. It is the fifth to achieve this status in the African continent, following Egyptwhich achieved ML3 for vaccines earlier in 2022. This move to ML3 will significantly contribute to WHO work to build capacity in low- and middle-income countries to produce mRNA vaccines through a centre of excellence and training (the mRNA vaccine technology hub) located in Cape Town, South Africa.
Results of the global benchmarking evaluation are presented as maturity levels on a scale of 1 to 4. Achieving Maturity Level 1 means some elements of a regulatory system exist. Maturity Level 2 indicates an evolving national regulatory system that partiallyperforms essential regulatory functions. More information is available here.
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A primary objective of the MVIP pilot programme was to assess the feasibility of administering the recommended 4 doses of the RTS,S malaria vaccine to young children in routine use in African settings. When pilot introductions started in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in 2019 there had never been a childhood vaccine for malaria, and its administration would require caregivers to bring their children to vaccination clinics for extra vaccine visits, with one near 2 years of age, later than for other childhood vaccines.
More than 3 years after the launch of the malaria vaccine in pilot implementations, evidence and experience gained in the pilots have confirmed that the vaccine is safe, life-saving and feasible to deliver. The pilots also provided the opportunity to learn how to overcome challenges administering the 4-dose vaccination schedule to achieve good uptake and community acceptance.
Across the 3 countries, challenges around the dosing schedule were similar, as were some of the interventions put in place to tackle them. In this article, Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) officers from each of the countries share their reflections.
The 3 countries shared similarities when it came to identifying missed opportunities for vaccination and tackling misunderstandings among health workers about the vaccination schedule. Across the board, visits to health facilities by EPI officers to witness vaccination in action and provide on-site training to health workers known as supportive supervisionidentified challenges and ways to rectify them.
Early on, we noted poor uptake of the vaccine in some facilities. When we went deeper through supportive supervision, and we went through scenarios with health workers of what they do if a child comes at a certain age [outside of the formal vaccination schedule], we uncovered a lot of misunderstood information, so we had to come in and intervene, said Mr Thomas Mavuto, Ministry of Health (MoH), Malawi.
Across the countries, health workers experienced challenges handling children who did not show up for vaccination on the expected schedule: 5, 6, 7 and 22 months in Malawi; and 6, 7, 9 and 24 months in Ghana and Kenya. In the first few months of introduction, health workers were often unsure whether to vaccinate children coming late for their 1st dose, or for subsequent doses.
There were missed opportunities for vaccination. In some areas, when a child came and was age 7 months, health workers would not give the vaccine, said Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, MoH Ghana.
One reason for the confusion was that countries initially adopted schedules that emphasized specific ages for each dose. In trainings, health workers were instructed to vaccinate children who fit specified age brackets. One reason for emphasizing specific ages for vaccination was concern about available vaccine supply in the initial months: the fear was that if all children under age 1 were eligible for the 1st dose there would not be enough vaccine to meet demand. As this was the first real-world vaccine implementation, countries were unsure how much to deviate from the recommended schedule. The result was that health workers were less confident handling scenarios that called for flexibility. In response, the countries reviewed and revised communications and training materials for health workers to clarify guidance (see number 4 below).
Shortly after becoming aware of some misunderstanding on the schedule, countries went back to the drawing board to ensure that information products, job aids and health messages for caregivers were as clear as possible.
In Kenya, at the launch of pilot introduction, the recommended schedule for dose 1 was age 6 months. When decisions were made to relax the eligibility and offer the 1st dose to children up to 1 year of age, it took some time for health workers to become familiar with the change and implement it.
When we first trained health workers, we told them the schedule was 6, 7, 9 and 24 months. But during implementation, after noticing missed opportunities for vaccination, we expanded the eligibility for the first dose from 6 months to before the child celebrates their 1st birthday. The change introduced some problems, said Dr Rose Jalang'o, MoH Kenya.
In Kenya, the team decided to modify vaccination stickers to further reduce confusion. While child health book stickers to document receipt of doses initially were labelled 6, 7, 9 and 24 months, the team changed those to read dose 1, 2, 3 or 4, so there wasnt any confusion if a child presented late for vaccination.
Ghana and Malawi developed short educational videos for health workers that outlined the dosing schedule and how to handle scenarios that might arise when children came late. In Ghana, this included a virtual, interactive quiz distributed on messaging platforms that presented multiple situations and real-time feedback on the correct way to respond. These remote tools were particularly useful in the Covid-19 context when trainings and visits to communities were limited or put on hold.
We came up with messages that are tailored for health workers, particularly those responsible for screening children for vaccination. The caregiver might bring the child to the clinic, but the health worker might not offer that service to a child if the vaccinator cannot determine if the child should receive the vaccine, said Mr Mavuto.
Countries also noted the importance of collaboration between the EPI and national malaria control programmes to ensure that health messages, leaflets and posters include facts on malaria and how to prevent it as well as the benefits of the new malaria vaccine.
The two programmes can leverage each others strengths during community engagements, communication efforts and media events. The malaria control team can use the existing EPI infrastructure as much as possible, said Dr Jalango.
A key challenge across the 3 countries is uptake of the 4th dose, which is scheduled near age 2 years and several months after children would have finished other childhood vaccinations.
In Malawi the last vaccination visithad been the 2nd dose of the measles-rubella vaccine, which comes when the child is 15 months old. Caregivers were used to the last visit at that age, but now they had to come again when the child is almost 2 years old, said Mr Mavuto.
Today, WHOs March 2022 position paper on the malaria vaccine recommends flexibility for country immunization programmes to determine the malaria vaccine schedule in ways that optimize delivery, for example, to align the 4th dose with other vaccines given in the 2nd year of life.
Following the WHO recommendation, and based on the countrys experience, Ghana recently decided to re-set its schedule for the 4th dose of malaria vaccine to age 18 months to coincide with the countrys schedule for dose 2 of the measles-rubella vaccine.
Based on our experience, I believe the first 3 doses wont be a challenge, but for the 4th dose, given that all 3 pilot countries are struggling somewhat on uptake of the final dose, other countries may be able to learn from our experience. If they can start 4th dose administration from 18 months, or at an age at which most countries have other vaccines, I think that its better, said Dr Kwame.
Kenya is considering a similar change to its vaccination schedule. Malawi has decided to retain its schedule of 22 months for dose 4. Additionally, to promote increased uptake of all doses, Malawi has increased training to health workers to inform them that they should offer the vaccine to any child who presents for vaccination from 5 months of age and should maintain a minimum of 4 weeks between vaccine doses; furthermore, the MoH plans to take opportunities to inform caregivers about the vaccine and its schedule, including via community-based radio. Looking forward, all of the pilot countries are considering ways to build on additional malaria vaccine visits to increase uptake of other child health services.
We are working to make parents aware that apart from malaria vaccination, they should come to the facility for normal growth monitoring and other services like vitamin A. We need to communicate that as a package, added Dr Mavuto.
A key takeaway from this discussion with experts in the malaria vaccine programme was that countries should tailor the recommended vaccination schedule and information, education and communication efforts to their context.
Scheduling decisions should be based on getting the maximum impact. There are always pros and cons, and every schedule will have some limitations, or some challenges, so its about making the decision based on what works best for your country, said Dr Kwame.
Countries should consider using the same traditional communication channels they use for other vaccines. They know how they do their own communications, how to communicate with communities, and that will help them tackle potential challenges, said Mr Mavuto.
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Thank you to Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, Ghana Ministry of Health, Dr Rose Jalang'o, Kenya Ministry of Health, and Mr Thomas Mavuto, Malawi Ministry of Health for your contributions.
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Autumns arrival heralds cool temperatures, warm sweaters, and anticipation of the upcoming holiday season. But its also when infectious respiratory viruses start to spread more readily. Thats why October is the ideal time to shore up your immunity against two common, potentially life-threatening viruses: influenza (flu) and SARS CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
With all the attention on COVID over the past two years, the focus on flu has waned somewhat. Last years flu season was very mild in fact, the peak number of positive cases was the lowest in at least the 25 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. But dont count on a repeat this winter.
"The general consensus is that this years flu season could be worse than average, for a couple of reasons," says infectious disease specialist Dr. John J. Ross, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
First, Australia had a particularly severe flu season this year, with three times the normal amount of cases. Australia is in the southern hemisphere and their winter flu season peaks in August, often predicting what happens in the United States and elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, he notes. Second, the masking and social distancing that many people followed to prevent COVID also prevented the flu. "But the era of widespread masking has ended, so were expecting more viral transmission this season," says Dr. Ross.
COVID cases and hospitalizations have dropped dramatically since earlier this year. On average, about 340 people died each day from the virus in August and September, compared to about 3,400 per day in early February 2022. "We expect that COVID rates will rise again over the winter, although not at the same magnitude as last winter," Dr. Ross says. Theres clear evidence that Omicron currently the most widely circulating COVID variant spreads more easily than earlier strains, but its less likely to kill you, he adds.
All adults should get an annual flu vaccine, with the rare exception of people whove had a life-threatening reaction to the shot in the past. The vaccine is especially important for those with a higher risk for serious complications from the flu. This includes
If youre over 65, the CDC recommends getting one of the vaccines that produces higher levels of antibodies that help protect you against the flu: the Fluzone High-Dose Quadrivalent, Flublock Quadrivalent recombinant, or the Fluad Quadrivalent adjuvanted vaccines. The first two contain higher amounts of antigens, the proteins that trigger the bodys antibody response. The third contains an adjuvant, which is an additive that enhances immune response. People who fall into the other high-risk categories mentioned above might also want to seek out one of these vaccines, says Dr. Ross. But get the standard flu vaccine if none of the other options are readily available.
The CDC is urging all adults to also stay up to date with COVID vaccines, including the new bivalent mRNA booster. The bivalent shots target both the original COVID strain and the two most recent Omicron subvariants (BA.4 and BA.5), which are more contagious than earlier strains. You should wait at least two months after your previous booster or primary vaccine series to get the new booster. Booster recommendations may differ for people who have a weakened immune system. See the CDC website for more detail on COVID vaccines and boosters.
"The real-world effectiveness of these boosters is a big question mark, but I certainly recommend one to anyone whos due for a booster, especially if youre older," says Dr. Ross. Certain data from the earlier rounds of boosters suggests that anything you can do to expand your immune systems repertoire of response to Omicron will likely protect you against severe disease and hospitalization from COVID, he adds. For example, a recent study among nursing home residents shows 26% fewer COVID infections, a 60% reduction in hospitalizations, and a 90% reduction in deaths for those who had received two booster shots at appropriate intervals compared with only one booster shot.
Theres no downside to getting the booster at the same time you get your annual flu shot, although those who experienced unpleasant side effects from a COVID vaccine in the past might want to get their flu shot on a different day. But for many people, getting both shots over and done with is a smart strategy.
Simple measures such as washing your hands often, using hand sanitizer when you cant wash your hands, and avoiding touching your eyes, nose, and mouth can help you stay healthy. Also, be sure to eat well, stay active, and get a good nights sleep.
The CDC has additional advice for protecting yourself against COVID-19, such as moving indoor activities outdoors, improving ventilation of indoor air, and taking precautions like wearing masks and distancing when in crowded places, or when COVID cases are high in your community.
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Vaccines against the flu and COVID-19: What you need to know - Harvard Health
