New COVID shots recommended for Americans ages 6 months and older this fall

All Americans ages 6 months and older should receive one of the new COVID-19 vaccines when they become available this fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

The recommendation comes as the country faces a summer wave of Covid, with the number of infected people rising. High infection rates In at least 39 states and territories.

Most Americans have acquired immunity to the coronavirus through repeated infection, vaccine doses, or both. Now the vaccines provide a gradual boost, remaining effective for only a few months as immunity wanes and the virus continues to evolve.

Yet across all age groups, the vast majority of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 had not received one of the doses offered last fall, according to data presented at a Thursday meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, the agency’s director, accepted the committee’s unanimous advice Thursday to recommend another round of vaccinations.

“Professionals and the public at large do not understand how mutated this virus is,” said Carol Hayes, liaison between the committee and the American College of Nurse-Midwives. “You need a vaccine this year to protect against this year’s strain of the virus.”

A vaccine made by Novavax will target JN.1, the variant that prevailed for several months in the winter and spring. The vaccines to be made by Pfizer and Moderna target KP.2, which until recently appeared poised to be the dominant variant.

But KP.2 appears to be giving way to two related variants, KP.3 and LB.1, which now represent More than half of new cases. All three variants, descended from JN.1, are together nicknamed FLiRT, after a mutation in the virus’s genes containing those letters.

Mutations are believed to help variants. Evading some immune defenses They spread faster as a result, but there is no evidence that the variants cause more severe disease.

COVID-related emergency department visits in the week ending June 15 increased by approximately 15 percent, and deaths by approximately 17 percent, compared to the previous week’s totals. Hospitalizations also appear to be increasing, however directione Based on data from A A subset of hospitals which still sends numbers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even though the requirement to do so expired in May.

“COVID is still here, and I don’t think it’s ever going to go away,” Dr. Stephen P. Fore, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said in an interview.

The biggest risk factor for serious illness is age. Adults 65 and older account for two-thirds of COVID hospitalizations and 82 percent of hospital deaths. However, only about 40% of Americans in that age group have been vaccinated with the Covid vaccine introduced last fall.

“This is an area where there is a lot of room for improvement and could prevent a lot of hospitalizations,” said Dr. Fiona Havers, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who provided the hospitalization data.

Although younger adults are less likely to develop severe disease, no groups are completely free of risk, CDC researchers said. Children — especially those under 5 — are also at risk, but only about 14% of them were vaccinated against Covid last fall.

Many parents mistakenly believe the virus is harmless to children, said Dr. Matthew Daly, a panelist and principal investigator at Kaiser Permanente Colorado.

“Because the burden was so high in older age groups, we lost focus on the absolute burden in pediatric age groups,” Dr. Daly said.

Even if children don’t get sick themselves, they can help spread the virus, especially once they return to school, Dr. Fore said.

“They are the people who, if they are exposed, are most likely to take it back to their parents and grandparents,” he said. “By vaccinating all groups, you are more likely to prevent the spread of the disease.”

According to data presented at the meeting, children under six months of age are the most affected by Covid-19, but they are not eligible for the new vaccines.

“It is critical that pregnant women get vaccinated, not only to protect themselves but also to protect their babies until they are old enough to be vaccinated,” said Dr. Denise Jamieson, a member of the panel and dean of the Harvard Carver School of Medicine and the University of Iowa, in an interview.

Among children and adults, vaccine coverage was lowest among groups most at risk for COVID-19: Native Americans, Black Americans, and Hispanic Americans.

In surveys, most Americans who said they would probably or definitely not get the vaccine last fall cited unknown side effects, a lack of adequate studies or a lack of trust in the government and drug companies.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said the vaccines are associated with only four serious side effects, but thousands of Americans have filed lawsuits over other medical injuries they say were caused by the injections.

At the meeting, CDC researchers said they had found, for the first time, that Pfizer’s Covid vaccine may have led to four additional cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological condition, for every million doses given to older adults. (The numbers available for the Moderna and Novavax vaccines were too small to analyze.)

The risk may not be real, the researchers said, but even if it were, the rate of GBS infection is comparable to that seen with other vaccines.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also investigated the possibility of stroke after vaccination, but the results so far are inconclusive, the agency’s scientists said. In any case, the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the potential harms, they said.

Participants lamented the sharp decline in the number of healthcare providers counseling patients about the importance of the Covid vaccine. Nearly half of caregivers said they do not recommend vaccines because they believe their patients will refuse.

There has also been an increase in physical and verbal assaults in hospitals and health care settings, said Dr. Helen Cape Talbot, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University and chair of the committee.

“Some of our doctors may not recommend this method due to concerns about their safety and the safety of their staff,” she said.

Although the committee members unanimously recommended Covid vaccination for people of all ages this time, they discussed the feasibility of global recommendations in the future. The vaccines are much more expensive than other vaccines, and are most cost-effective when given to older people.

At the individual level, the Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies, including Medicare and Medicaid, to cover the costs of vaccines recommended by the advisory committee at no cost. But as many as thirty million Americans do not have health insurance.

The Bridge Access program, a federal initiative that makes vaccines available to underinsured and uninsured Americans, is set to end in August.

Unless vaccine prices come down, the cost of vaccinating all Americans may not be sustainable, panelists said.

“As more and more of the community is exposed to the vaccine or the disease, it will become less cost-effective,” Dr. Talbot said. “We will need a less expensive vaccine to make this work.”