The good news is that, given the significant buildup of protection from previous infections and vaccinations, the two most important metrics – emergency room visits and deaths – have not shown similar increases. The weekly percentage of emergency room visits diagnosed with Covid-19 is low and similar to last year’s summer wave. Deaths are also low, although they are still only provisional counts for the most recent weeks.
The FDA has firmly embraced a strategy of offering annual COVID-19 vaccines in the run-up to winter, not summer, surges. The agency’s long-held idea has been to encourage Americans to get vaccinated against flu and COVID-19 together between September and November, just before a host of cold-weather respiratory illnesses strike together. The new vaccination booster may reduce levels of severe respiratory illness at a time when health care systems are most at risk of being overwhelmed.
Seasonality
But while seasonal flu and some other respiratory viruses typically surge almost exclusively in winter, COVID-19’s seasonality has never been a sure thing. And so far, summer surges have emerged as regularly as winter ones, creating some awkwardness for the vaccine rollout.
Some experts have recommended getting vaccinated against COVID-19 to protect against a summer surge in cases. “Now is the time to get vaccinated with this surge,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN on Sunday.
However, the only vaccines currently available target last year’s strains (related to the XBB.1.5 omicron variant), which no longer exist and may not offer strong protection against the current strains (the JN.1 and KP.2 omicron variants). Even if the 2024-25 vaccine targeting KP.2 is approved by the FDA this week and hits pharmacies next week, it takes two weeks for one dose to produce full protection. By then, the summer surge will likely be waning. In fact, it appears to have already peaked in some parts of the country, including some areas in the South and West.
The other thing to keep in mind is when to get maximum protection from the likely winter wave. For healthy people ages 5 and older, the CDC recommends recommended receiving only one injection last yearVaccines offer maximum protection for about four months. If you get your annual vaccine in early September, your protection may wane if COVID-19 peaks again later in the year, as it has in the past two years.
Under the 2023-24 guidelines, people aged 65 and older can receive a second COVID-19 booster dose four months after receiving the first. People with moderately or severely compromised immune systems can also receive additional doses of the updated COVID-19 vaccine.
This story originally appeared in Art-Technica.