All Americans ages 6 months and older should receive one of the new COVID-19 vaccines when they become available this fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
The recommendation comes as the country faces a summer wave of Covid, with the number of infected people rising High infection rates In at least 39 states and territories.
Most Americans have built up immunity to the coronavirus from repeated infections, vaccine doses, or both. Vaccines now provide a gradual boost, and they only last a few months as immunity wanes and the virus continues to evolve.
Yet across all age groups, the vast majority of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 had not received one of the doses offered last fall, according to data presented at a Thursday meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
doctor. Mandy Cohen, the agency’s director, accepted the committee’s unanimous advice on Thursday to recommend another round of immunizations.
“Professionals and the public in general do not understand how mutated this virus is,” said Carol Hayes, committee coordinator for the American College of Nurses and Midwives. “You need the vaccine this year to protect against this year’s strain of the virus.”
Novavax’s vaccine will target JN.1, the variant that prevailed for several months in the winter and spring. The doses to be released by Pfizer and Moderna are targeted toward KP.2, which until recently appeared poised to be the dominant variant.
But KP.2 appears to be giving way to two related variants, KP.3 and LB.1, which now represent More than half of new cases. All three variants, descended from JN.1, are together nicknamed FLiRT, after a mutation in the virus’s genes containing those letters.
It is believed that mutations help variants Evading some immune defenses They spread faster as a result, but there is no evidence that the variants cause more severe disease.
COVID-related emergency department visits in the week ending June 15 increased by approximately 15 percent, and deaths by approximately 17 percent, compared to the previous week’s totals. Hospitalizations also appear to be increasing, however directione Based on data from A Subset of hospitals Which is still reporting numbers to the CDC even though the requirement to do so expires in May.
“COVID is still here, and I don’t think it’s ever going to go away,” Dr. Stephen P. Fore, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said in an interview.
The biggest risk factor for severe illness is age. Adults 65 and older account for two-thirds of COVID-19 hospitalizations and 82% of in-hospital deaths. However, only about 40% of Americans in that age group have been vaccinated with the Covid vaccine introduced last fall.
“This is an area where there is a lot of room for improvement and could prevent a lot of hospitalizations,” the doctor said. Fiona Havers, the CDC researcher who provided the hospitalization data.
While younger adults are less likely to get severely ill, no group is completely free of risk, the CDC researchers said. Children — especially those under 5 — are also at risk, but only about 14% of them were vaccinated against Covid last fall.
Dr Hans said many parents mistakenly believe the virus is harmless in children. Matthew Daly, a panelist and senior researcher at Kaiser Permanente Colorado.
“Because the burden was so high in the older age groups, we lost sight of the absolute burden in the pediatric age groups,” said Dr. Daly.
Even if children don’t get sick themselves, they can promote the spread of the virus, especially once they return to school, Dr. Fore said.
“They are the ones who, if they are exposed to the virus, are more likely to bring it back to their parents and grandparents,” he said. “By vaccinating all groups, you are more likely to prevent the spread of the disease.”
Among children, infants under 6 months of age were the most affected by Covid, according to data presented at the meeting. But they are not eligible for the new shots.
“It is crucial for pregnant women to get vaccinated, not only to protect themselves but also to protect their babies until they are old enough to receive the vaccine,” says Dr. Denise Jamison, a panelist and dean of the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, said in an interview.
Among both children and adults, vaccine coverage was lowest among the groups most at risk from Covid: Native Americans, Black Americans, and Hispanic Americans.
In surveys, most Americans who said they would probably or definitely not get the vaccine last fall cited unknown side effects, a lack of adequate studies or a lack of trust in the government and drug companies.
The CDC has said the vaccines are associated with only four serious side effects, but thousands of Americans have filed claims for other medical injuries they say were caused by the shots.
At the meeting, CDC researchers said they had found, for the first time, that Pfizer’s Covid vaccine may have led to four additional cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological condition, for every million doses given to older people. (The numbers available for the Moderna and Novavax vaccines were too small to analyze.)
The risk may not be real, the researchers said, but even if it were, the rate of GBS infection is comparable to that seen with other vaccines.
The agency’s scientists said the CDC has also investigated a possible risk of stroke after vaccination, but the results so far have been inconclusive. In any case, they said, the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the potential harms.
Panelists lamented the sharp decline in the number of health care providers advising patients about the importance of getting vaccinated against the coronavirus. Nearly half of providers said they did not recommend the shot because they believed their patients would refuse.
Dr. said. Helen Cape Talbot, professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University and chair of the committee.
“Some of our doctors may not recommend it due to concerns about their safety and that of their staff,” she said.
Although the committee members unanimously recommended Covid vaccination for people of all ages this time, they discussed the feasibility of global recommendations in the future. The vaccines are much more expensive than other vaccines, and are most cost-effective when given to older people.
At the individual level, the Affordable Care Act requires insurers, including Medicare and Medicaid, to cover vaccines recommended by the advisory committee at no cost. But as many as 30 million Americans don’t have health insurance.
The Bridge Access program, a federal initiative that makes vaccines available to underinsured and uninsured Americans, is scheduled to expire in August.
Panelists said that unless vaccine prices fall, the cost of vaccinating all Americans may not be sustainable.
“As more and more of society is exposed to the vaccine or the disease, it will become much less cost-effective,” the doctor says. Talbot said. “We will need a less expensive vaccine to make this work.”
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