On the heels of another COVID winter and flu season, public health
officials are renewing their
call for shots.
The encouragement is coming from the top: White House COVID coordinator Ashish
Jha urged in a Twitter
thread, “Go get your updated COVID vaccine and annual flu
shot — before Halloween. Make sure others in your life do the same.”
But the reality is bleak. State data shows that 2.2 million fully vaccinated
Mass. residents have not received any
booster shots. Nationally, half of adults had heard little or
nothing about the new, redesigned
booster that protects against Omicron and its subvariants.
The good news is that if you’re in that boat, you saved yourself a shot. People
who have received two initial doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine only need
to get the latest booster to be as protected as possible.
Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of Boston College’s Program for Global Public
Health, summed it up nicely in a sports analogy. “If you had a couple of shots
before and now you go get the bivalent booster, you’re fully covered … It’s not
like getting the full set of baseball cards. If you have the most recent card,
you’re OK.”
Other
top stories
- New nasal spray
vaccines might reduce COVID infections, but data supporting
the approach and funding for clinical trials is scant.
- For the first time in three
months, one area of Massachusetts reported high community COVID levels: Berkshire
County.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer maintain a list of COVID travel advisories for foreign countries.
No comments:
Post a Comment