John Yang:
Judy, new boosters became available around Labor Day to protect against both the original virus and the now dominant Omicron variant.
Since then, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 11.5 million people in the United States have gotten one. But a Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll late last month found that half of those surveyed said they’d only heard a little or nothing at all about the updated boosters.
So what does this mean for the coming winter?
Dr. Peter Hotez is the co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for vaccine development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Dr. Hotez thanks so much for being with us, coming back on the show.
We are now heading into the third winter dealing with COVID. But, this winter, a lot of the precautions that had been in place previously are no longer in place. But, on the other hand, a lot more people are vaccinated.
What are your concerns about this winter?
Dr. Peter Hotez, Baylor College of Medicine: Well, we have a good news/not-so-good news story.
The good news is the number of cases is really starting to come down. And that’s exciting. And so that allows us to do some things that we haven’t been able to do in the past. But there’s some concerns. First of all, the number of cases is going up in France in the U.K., the United Kingdom. And, for the last two winters, when we have seen a rise in cases in the United Kingdom and France, guess what? We start seeing cases first pop up in the Northeast, and then the rest of the country.
So I think we do have to be concerned about this winter. And, as you rightly point out, not enough Americans are getting this new bivalent booster. And here’s why that’s important. Number one, the number — the protection against hospitalizations does decline several months after you’re out from your last booster.
So, if you’re four or five months out of your last booster — away from your last booster, the protection could for — against hospitalization can go down from 80, 90 percent to 40, 50 percent. We don’t have all of the numbers yet. But that’s the way it’s looking. So that’s issue number one.
Issue number two, if we do have another wave, chances are, it’s going to look more like this BA.5 current variant than it does the original lineage. And, by getting that bivalent booster, it’s going to pick up your virus-neutralizing antibodies and make it more likely that you’re going to respond to whatever variant is coming down the pike.
But only 11 million Americans have gotten it so far. That’s only 4 percent of those eligible. The Kaiser Family Foundation survey says a third of Americans plan to take it. But that’s still not adequate either. So we have a lot of work and advocacy to do over the next few weeks.
