It may seem hard to believe, but the fall/winter of 2023 will be our fourth winter with COVID-19 and the first without a public health emergency.
Covid is like an unwanted house guest that refuses to leave. Just when you think life is getting back to normal, everything goes haywire again.
so where are we together SARS-CoV-2The virus that causes COVID?
“One thing we have learned over the last few years is that this virus is not a seasonal virus like the flu. It’s constantly with us,” Dr. David Montefiori, director of the HIV and COVID-19 vaccine research and development laboratory at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, said at a media briefing. “We are no longer in a period where we have a single dominant variant circulating. “We have several variants circulating.”
COVID-19 cases have been rising steadily since July. This is the same pattern that has been seen since the pandemic began. Nationally, thousands of COVID-19 people are being hospitalized each week, according to the Centers for Disease Control COVID Data Tracker, It’s hard to get a close look at what’s happening in communities because states are no longer required to report new cases after the U.S. public health emergency ended in May.
The worst of the pandemic is behind us
While the number of cases is rising, the worst of the pandemic is behind us, primarily because everyone has some form of immunity against SARS-CoV-2 at this point.
This is called hybrid immunity. This means that most people have either been infected with COVID once or multiple times and survived, have been vaccinated and have recovered from COVID, or have been vaccinated and still get COVID. It is done.
It provides a high level of immunity against viruses. Obviously, this is not preventing people from getting infected or getting re-infected, but it is helping to reduce the severity of those infections.
But the problem is that the virus is still with us.
“Right now we have people in the hospital with COVID, and we still have people who are dying from COVID,” he said. Dr. Cameron Wolfe, infectious disease specialist at Duke Health. “This is still orders of magnitude worse than flu, and we must view it as unacceptable. Covid is less of a problem than it used to be, but people are still dying, people still have Covid for a long time, it’s still disruptive to family and scheduling and everything else.
The virus is constantly mutating
Like all viruses, SARS-CoV-2 continues to mutate.
Public health officials in the US and around the world are tracking a new Omicron variant named BA.2.86, It has been found in many countries and the US
“This new variant, BA.2.86, is different from other variants to about the same extent that Omicron was different from earlier variants,” Dr. Montefiori said. “This is a huge leap in terms of additional mutations in its protein. It’s very reminiscent of when Omicron first came out and the problems it created. There are concerns that it may be better at evading our immune responses.”
vaccine boosters work
The new COVID booster released this fall does not target the new variant because there was not enough time for that strain to evolve into the new vaccine. However, it will target the original COVID strain and XBB, a highly infectious Omicron subvariant that circulated last fall and this year.
“I think we have two objectives when we vaccinate patients, and it’s exactly the same with the flu vaccine and the new COVID vaccine,” Wolff emphasized. “First of all, does the vaccine substantially reduce the number of infections occurring, and the guidance says the vaccine is still highly effective. But the second point is to make a hammer-home point. Even if you get the flu or COVID, the vaccine can turn the severity of the illness that requires hospitalization into a condition you can manage at home.
The bottom line: Even though the vaccines are not designed for the new variant, BA.2.86, they still offer some protection against it. This is because even though the antibodies generated by the vaccine are not a perfect weapon against either variant, the shot will help develop T-cell immunity, which helps prevent severe disease.
“Vaccines are our best path to avoid those problems, and happily for several decades we have accepted that as a truism for influenza, so we can approach the COVID vaccine with the same perspective,” Wolfe says. “How can we not see from this?”
This is where the concern lies.
Current CDC (Centers for Disease Control) data shows that only 17% of eligible Americans received bivalent boosters last year. This means most people in the United States have not received a stimulus for more than a year.
“It’s clear that immunity to this virus wanes over time, so the best thing people can do to maintain a normal way of life is to get their booster shots,” Dr. Montefiori said. continue.” “People can wear a mask if they feel it’s important, if it makes them feel more comfortable avoiding exposure to large crowds.”
“But the best advice is to get vaccinated,” Dr. Montefiori said. “And the good news is that the booster shots are working.”