![]() “The good news is, most of the patients don’t need hospitalization.” These subvariants are getting them again, much to my surprise,” Michelson said. “Omicron is not protecting people even a few months after they got sick with it. Edward Michelson, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, is seeing many patients again, even those who had Omicron earlier in the year. Undercounted Covid-19 cases leave US with a blind spot as BA.5 variant becomes dominantĭr. It also spreads more easily as people spend more time indoors. Much like with the flu, scientists think the coronavirus transmits more efficiently in colder weather. “I do think, anytime you can introduce additional strains or variants into a vaccine, the human body’s immune response tends to be a little bit broader and more durable and potentially longer-lasting,” he said.īut it’s impossible to know at this point what variant will be dominant a couple months from now, how different it will be from the currently circulating variants or even how many cases there will be, because it’s hard to predict how humans will behave when cases rise – and cases will most likely rise. With the highly contagious BA.5 subvariant now dominant, the goal of minimizing the number of infections is “kind of lost,” but the new vaccines should help keep hospitalizations and deaths down, Chang said. “I just wish that the timing had been sooner so that we could actually be dealing with the kind of BA.5 surge that we have right now,” he said. Michael Chang, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston, thinks vaccines with an Omicron component will be helpful – within limits. Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesĮxpert explains how to protect yourself against the recent Covid surgesĭr. The head of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority warned the agency's anticipated $2 billion budget gap may widen in 2026 as it struggles to win back riders. With new variants in circulation, the vaccines still are good at keeping people out of the hospital, but most scientists think people need a vaccine that offers more protection.Ĭommuters walk through the Times Square subway station in New York, US, on Thursday, June 30, 2022. ![]() The current shots are based on the original strain of the virus and offered nearly full protection, even from infection, early on. ![]() Some experts wonder whether the Omicron-specific boosters will come in time to make a difference and if they will actually offer more protection than the current shots. There are about 124,000 new cases reported each day – far from the levels reported during the Omicron surge, but nearing peak case rates from the Delta wave – and cases are more undercounted than ever. If the shots meet US Food and Drug Administration standards, they will probably be available as early as September, the FDA says.īut cases are high now. This fall, Americans could get boosted with a mRNA Covid-19 vaccine unlike any that’s come before.īoth Pfizer and Moderna are working on bivalent boosters: vaccines made up of both the old formula and a new one that targets the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the coronavirus. ![]()
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