If nothing else as a public-service announcement, we’re going to periodically be repeating our call to action to help increase COVID booster uptake in PoC communities first put out late last month. Again it’s worth celebrating this, the public service and media awareness campaign to boost vaccine uptake by American PoC communities has been one of the great public health success stories of our country, and in 2021, it led to a complete reversal of the COVID death and hospitalization statistics with African-Americans, Latinos, indigenous, Middle Eastern/North African and Asian/Pacific-Islander communities having some of the highest vaccine uptake as the delta variant rolled in. Combined with improved mask usage and discipline with social distancing, this allowed PoC to weather the storm of delta and omicron BA1, far better than Red States and Red Counties (which have become by far the hardest hit of the pandemic). However as the clinical and public health community have been stressing, the research has been showing that immunity does wane over time, which is why the boosters are needed for best protection. Here, unfortunately, PoC are back to lagging in booster uptake again, and so it’s essentially to work on a concerted effort to again raise awareness to encourage COVID booster uptake, and other protective measures as COVID levels climb.
We also just wanted to clarify some confusion from an announcement today, the FDA announcing that the vaccines are boosters are not well matched to the BA2 strain, which is now predominant in the US and rising very quickly to become the latest COVID wave in America. This is not good news but we talked to the health care workers in our group and it’s important to keep the specifics in perspective—even though BA2 does have high immune evasion and spreading capabilities, still the evidence strongly shows that vaccinated and booster individuals have a much lower risk of a serious COVID case from BA2 than those who haven’t been vaccinated, or haven’t gotten a booster. Masking (esp with a good F.F.P. mask, or a well fitting surgical one if unavailable) is also helpful mainly by just reducing the dosage of the virus even if someone does breathe it in, which makes it easier to fight. So yes, you still might get COVID from BA2 since it’s so contagious, but so long as you’re boosted and masked, there’s a very low danger of having a serious case, and you’ll be much better protected from hospitalization and long COVID. So again, it’s essential right now to get the message out into PoC communities, encourage high booster uptake just like we successfully did with the original vaccine rollout that gave so much protection against delta.
It’s very important in general to prepare for BA2. There was some happy talk and wishful-thinking for a while that it might be mild, or that Americans might be more protected due to the previous large wave of BA1. But that hope has been dashed from the latest data out of Britain and the early hot-spots in the US in the Northeast. They’ve found that Britain also had a huge wave of omicron BA1 just like we did (with few constraints in place) but it gave them little protection against BA2, which has become one of the deadliest of the whole pandemic, and their hospitals are filling up. They don’t know why yet but BA1 immunity isn’t very good, and there are a lot of reinfections that are very severe, with cumulative damage and more long COVID. It’s even worse for the United States because we’re much less vaccinated and boosted than England, but also any immunity from BA1 wave was longer ago so even weaker. And our own wave is just starting, NY and NJ already with big increases and about half of states are seeing spiking cases and much higher levels in waste water. (The water measurements are important because we’re not getting accurate testing numbers anymore due to all the home testing and lack of testing sites, which makes cases look artificially low, and waste water measurements show a broad rise in the virus.) Hospitalizations of course always trail those initial cases by weeks, so that just means it’s even more urgent to roll out the booster campaign for PoC’s to close the gap in their booster rate, and to encourage masking in any regions posting a rise in BA2 cases. This could mean life or death (not to mention the difference between health and disability from long COVID) for hundreds of thousands of people so it’s important to act now, and get the word out.