The President’s new COVID response coordinator says people in their 50s should talk to theirs doctors before getting a fourth vaccine shot.
Data from Israel that shows a fourth shot increases protection against severe illness and death for people over 60 is “pretty compelling”, says White House COVID Czar, Doctor Ashish Jha, but he says for people in their 50s, who are also eligible, it’s a “closer call”, based on your risk level, that you should make with your doctor.
UW Medicine’s Doctor Deborah Fuller says the reason is what’s known as “immunosenescence”, or the body’s reduced immune response to vaccines that comes around age 55. “If you’re somebody who is exposed a lot to people out there, you know, in a job, say, in a hospital or something, it doesn’t hurt you to get the booster,” Fuller says, “It could help, and it could help to extend your immunity.”
Doctor Fuller says you should still have some protection from the third shot, but the fourth could be enough to put you over the top in terms of keeping you out of the hospital and for added protection for people around you who might be immunocompromised or at greater risk.
Meanwhile, COVID cases are rising again in the U.S., with Philadelphia reinstating its indoor mask mandate but no sign of that return in the west. It comes as a federal judge in Florida rules the federal mask mandate on public transportation, such as buses and airplanes, is void. That’s led to a patchwork response, with the Transportation Security Administration now saying it won’t enforce the mask rule, while some airlines and some local public transit agencies saying they’ll continue to require masks.
Health officers in Clark County, Washington, and Multnomah County, Oregon, say with looser mask rules and more activity comes greater risk – not just for infections but for new COVID mutations that could lead to another surge.
UW Medicine’s Doctor Ali Mokdad says we’re in a good place right now, with declining infections and so many people infected by Omicron that we have better protection against the BA.2 sub-variant. “This could change any time,” Mokdad says, “and the only way to guarantee we’ll not have a new variant is to reduce the spread of infection, and the only way to reduce the spread of infection right now is to get your vaccine and make sure you are protected.”
Mokdad admits we’re unlikely to change a lot of minds of people who refuse to get the shots, especially now that they know anti-viral drugs, like Paxlovid, are out there to potentially save their lives, but he says those drugs are far more expensive and harder to get, with short supplies and health insurers taking time to approve their use. Mokdad says we need to focus more on building a stockpile of anti-viral drugs. He says we also need a plan not only to distribute them but to redistribute them so that they go to the places where they are needed the most.
