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With millions of Americans
having traveled to gather with friends and family over Thanksgiving,
experts expect that those gatherings stirred up social networks and gave
new coronavirus subvariants fresh pockets of vulnerable people to infect.
As a result, cases and hospitalizations
may tick up after the holiday, but experts are hopeful they
won’t be the big waves of winters past.
“Covid [test] positivity is
going up,” said Shishi Luo, associate director of bioinformatics and
infectious disease at the genetic testing company Helix, which has been
monitoring coronavirus variants. “It’s increasing fastest among 18- to
24-year-olds” in the Helix sampling.
Omicron subvariants BQ.1
and its offshoot BQ.1.1, which are descendants of BA.5, now dominate
transmission in the US. For the week ending Nov. 26, the CDC estimates
that BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 caused 57% of all new Covid-19 cases in the US.
Covid-19 cases,
hospitalizations and deaths have remained flat for the past four weeks.
On average, more than 300 Americans are still dying
and 3,400 people are being hospitalized each day
with Covid-19, according to CDC data.
If there’s anything working
against Americans now, it’s the vaccination rate.
New research
indicates that a country’s vaccination rate matters more than any other
single factor when it comes to the effects of variants on a population.
CDC data shows that
two-thirds of the population has completed the primary series of the
Covid-19 vaccines, and only 11% of those who are eligible have gotten an
updated bivalent booster.
A new study
found that the updated boosters work like the original boosters. They
protect against symptomatic infection in the range of 40% to 60%, meaning
that even when vaccine protection is its most potent, about a month after
getting the shot, people may still be vulnerable to breakthrough
infections.
That’s in about the same
range as typical efficacy for flu vaccines.
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