New York City — Federal health officials said Tuesday that Americans may need to get one Covid-19 vaccine each year, explaining that the country will live with the coronavirus for the foreseeable future.
“This week marks an important shift in our fight against the virus,” said Dr Ashish Jha, who leads the Covid-19 response team at the White House. “It indicates our ability to make Covid vaccines a more routine part of our lives as we continue to eliminate serious illness and deaths and protect Americans heading into fall and winter.”
Although Tuesday’s announcement is not surprising — the Biden administration has been hinting at such a shift since the spring — it is an important moment as the government continues to de-escalate its pandemic response.
Jha said the updated and newly authorized Covid-19 boosters will be free to all eligible and required, but future vaccines and treatments may not be, as funding for the pandemic response dwindles and the government begins shifting treatments to the commercial market.
Vaccine experts said the switch to annual shots indicates that Covid-19 will not go away.
“Our great-grandchildren will have access to the coronavirus vaccines,” said Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic. “Just like you and I, when we get the flu shot this fall, one of the ingredients we’ll get is derived from the 1918 pandemic influenza virus, and 100 years later, we’re still immunized against it.”
Peter Hotez, dean of the National College of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said on Twitter that it might be a good time to move on to annual reinforcements if we can answer some key questions, like how well are the updated snapshots working?
What are you going to put in next year’s photos? Hotez tweeted. What global monitoring mechanisms should be implemented to identify early strains?
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday that although he expects this fall to be the start of annual Covid-19 vaccinations, those with weakened immune systems may need more frequent protection.
“In the absence of a completely different variant, it is likely that we are heading down a path with a vaccination rhythm similar to that of the annual flu shot, with yearly updated Covid-19 shots identical to the strains currently in circulation for most of the population,” he said.
Fauci said the latest boosters should continue to protect Americans as long as the coronavirus changes gradually, moving away from the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants currently in circulation.
He acknowledged that the plan to give annual snapshots may need to be revised if the coronavirus makes a big evolutionary leap, as happened when the Omicron variant appeared around Thanksgiving. He likened this to a “curve ball outside the left field”.
“There is nothing we can do about it except knowing that we have vaccine platforms that will allow us to move quickly to address this,” Fauci said.
But he stressed that barring any major changes in the virus, updated boosters should continue to protect in the coming year and could be updated annually.
Tuesday’s announcement marked a shift in how Covid-19 prevention messages are sent, too.
“The biggest problem with vaccines today is that people don’t get them,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, chief of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 1 in 3 Americans age 5 and older has received a booster.
When planning the announcement, Wachter said, the White House and the CDC were hoping to gain more support by removing some of the uncertainty about when they might need their next shots.
The overall goal, he said, is to make boosters more manageable by classifying them as something you do every year, like getting a flu shot.
“I think it’s a really smart way to change the brand and rethink it,” Wachter said.
At Tuesday’s briefing, Jha urged Americans 12 and older to take advantage of the updated boosters, stressing that it’s the first time the country has had vaccines that match variants currently in circulation.
He also said that people should get their flu shots at the same time as their Covid-19 vaccines.
“I really think that is why God gave us two arms, one for the flu vaccine and one for the Covid vaccine,” Jha said sarcastically.
“The benefits of updating your Covid-19 vaccines are clear,” said Dr. Rochelle Walinsky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
She said BA.5 and BA.4 were the dominant prevalent variants of Covid. Although hospital admissions are down 14% since last week, the number of deaths is now higher than it was in the spring.
“The average daily death toll for seven days is still very high: about 375 a day, which is much higher than the about 200 deaths a day we saw earlier this spring and, in my opinion, too high for a preventable disease,” Walinsky said. him with vaccines.” .
Fauci said his message to Americans is “simple: Get your updated Covid-19 shot as soon as you are eligible to protect yourself, your family and your community from Covid-19 this fall and winter.”
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