![]() “The official recommendations are to wait two months after your last booster and three months after a recent Covid infection before getting the new vaccine,” Dr. But people who recently received the bivalent Covid-19 vaccine or who were recently infected with the virus itself can wait a bit longer - depending on individual risk, experts say. Those who got their last Covid-19 vaccine several months or longer ago should get it as soon as possible. Now, amid the recent surge, many people may have some natural immunity from a recent infection and could consider waiting to get the shot to extend their protection even longer. Only about 1 in 6 people in the US got the updated bivalent booster, and most people who did get that shot were last vaccinated when it first became available a year ago. Koldo圜hris/Moment RF/Getty ImagesĬDC recommends updated Covid-19 vaccines for everyone 6 months and older ![]() African American female nurse or doctor injecting vaccine into caucasian blonde girl patient siiting on examination table in vaccination center. Young girl watching her being injected with COVID-19 vaccine at a medical clinic. The models suggest that strong uptake could save tens of thousands of lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations.īut the vast majority of people in the US have weathered this summer’s surge thus far with no vaccine-induced protection, making the new shots that much more important to minimize the risk for severe disease heading into respiratory virus season. The vaccine can make a “substantial difference” in the trajectory of severe outcomes, he said. So, I don’t think there’s any sensible gaming of the timing (of getting the shot) when the risk is already there.” “It’s clear that things are starting to go up already. “There’s immune waning, but the virus is also evolving,” Lessler said. ![]() The US does not have one dominant variant in circulation right now, but the EG.5 lineage is most prevalent, accounting for more than a fifth of cases. While these variants don’t seem to be causing different or more severe symptoms than the viruses that came before them, EG.5 does appear to have more immune escape, experts say. But, he said, rates are rising sooner and faster than anticipated and recent trends more closely track with scenarios where the virus has high immune escape, making people more susceptible to infection and reinfection. The latest forecasts suggest that weekly hospitalization rates will continue to rise, most likely to double what they are now by the season’s peak in December. ![]() Lessler helps lead the Covid-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, which collects data from several teams to create long-term forecasts for Covid-19 trends. “The earlier you get it, the more similar it’ll be to the current circulating strains and the more immediate protection you get,” said Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. Those variants and their offshoots are already driving a wave of Covid-19 transmission, with weekly hospitalizations nearly triple what they were two months ago and continuing to rise. Here’s where and when to get it - and RSV and flu shots, too Syringes with vaccines are prepared at the LA Care and Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plans' Community Resource Center where they were offering members and the public free flu and COVID-19 vaccines in October 2022 in Lynwood, California.
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