Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Pointing To Covid Surge, White House Urges Americans To Get Boosted
The Biden administration on Tuesday urged the public to strengthen their protections against Covid-19, noting that the BA.5 subvariant of Omicron has become the dominant strain in the country. (Joseph, 7/12)
[Ashish Jha, MD, the White House committee's coordinator] acknowledged that some people may be holding off on getting boosted, anticipating a rise in COVID activity in the fall, while others might be waiting for an Omicron-specific booster. Jha said getting boosted now won't preclude people from getting another dose in the fall or winter when the Omicron-specific version is expected to be available. (Schnirring, 7/12)
People who get boosted for COVID-19 now will still be eligible to get a variant-specific vaccine in the fall, the White House COVID-19 Response Team said Tuesday. (Gonzalez, 7/12)
More on the spread of covid —
People hospitalized with Covid-19 have doubled since early May as the even more transmissible omicron BA.5 subvariant has caused another wave of infection across the country, U.S. health officials said Tuesday. But deaths from Covid still remain relatively low given the number of infections right now, the officials said. (Kimball, 7/12)
Covid-19 is circulating widely as the BA.5 Omicron subvariant elevates the risk of reinfections and rising case counts, spoiling chances for a summer reprieve from the pandemic across much of the U.S. Covid-19 levels are high in a fifth of U.S. counties, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s metric based on case and hospital data, a share that has been mostly rising since mid-April. BA.5 is estimated to represent nearly two in three recent U.S. cases that are averaging just more than 100,000 a day, CDC data show. (Kamp and Hopkins, 7/12)
Seven cases have been recorded in the U.S. - two in California and one each in Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Washington. Both California cases were detected in Bay Area wastewater sampling in mid-June - though since genetic sequencing is limited, experts say it is likely far more widespread. (Hwang, 7/12)
