But, as Chin-Hong said, people who are older than 65 or immunocompromised might not want to wait until that shot is widely available to boost their immunity. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve a third version of the vaccine that takes into account more recent variants before the end of September. Given the uptick in cases right now, if you’re vulnerable you may not want to wait,” Chin-Hong of UCSF said. The recommendations for children 5 and younger and for those who are immunocompromised are more complex, but the CDC created flow charts to determine your status, and it’s recommended you speak with your doctor. People who are older than 65 can also get a second dose of the bivalent vaccine if their last one happened at least four months earlier. The bivalent shot was introduced last fall to protect against the highly contagious omicron variant. That means if you have never gotten a COVID-19 vaccine before, you only need to get one bivalent shot.Īnd, if you had previous versions of the vaccine (known as monovalent vaccines), you need to get a bivalent shot to be fully vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now advises people age 6 and older who are not immunocompromised to have at least one bivalent Moderna or Pfizer shot to be considered fully vaccinated. What does it mean to be fully vaccinated?Īt this point, vaccination is one of the most confusing aspects of the constantly mutating Sars-CoV-2 virus. If you’re wondering what the latest uptick means, you’re not alone. “At the minimum we have enough tools to have individual protection without having mandates.” Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF Health. The right answer is somewhere in between,” said Dr. Most people are not thinking about (COVID-19) at all. Still, public health experts recommend people take the typical precautions to prevent a serious outbreak: vaccinate, mask and isolate. The uptick in cases is not having a “dramatic impact on hospitals” so far, California Hospitals Association spokeswoman Jan Emerson-Shea said. The Labor Day holiday will surely fuel more transmission and hospitalizations, but hospitals are nowhere near the brink of collapse that previous surges threatened. The number of daily new hospital admissions increased more than 87% since the start of summer. The second indicator of COVID-19’s comeback - hospitalizations - is also trending upward. But wastewater surveillance networks confirm what the testing data suggests: COVID-19 infections are on the rise across California. ![]() That’s a higher positivity rate than last winter’s surge, although testing data has become less reliable as access decreased and testing rates plummeted. ![]() The test positivity rate has been growing steadily over the past two months, increasing about 8 percentage points since July to a 12.5% seven-day average.
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