Consider This from NPR - How To Protect Yourself From The BA.5 Omicron Subvariant

Episode Date: July 28, 2022

The BA.5 variant is the most dominant strain of COVID-19 in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's highly transmissible and it's driving up COVID cases and hospitalizations. This week NPR learned that the Biden administration may scrap plans to let more younger adults get second COVID-19 boosters this summer. Instead, officials are trying to speed up availability of the next generation of boosters in the fall — boosters that specifically target the new subvariant. We talk to Dr. Robert Wachter, the chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, about the administration's booster strategy and how people can protect themselves in the midst of the latest surge. This episode also features reporting from NPR's Rob Stein.A heads up to listeners: we recorded this episode Thursday afternoon, before the Biden administration announced that it will hold off on offering boosters for people under 50 this summer.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Okay, so just a heads up, listeners, we recorded this episode Thursday afternoon before the Biden administration announced that they're going to hold off on offering boosters for people under 50 this summer. pandemic. And I get it. We are all a little bit tired of COVID right now. But this virus, it's constantly mutating, always reinventing itself, and new variants are continuing to emerge. The dominant strain of COVID in the U.S. at this point is a sub-variant called BA.5. A very transmissible version of Omicron variant we saw here this past winter. In fact, this new variant that infected me is getting a lot of people infected all around the world, not just here in the United States. That is President Biden speaking from the Rose Garden this week about his recent COVID infection. But the reality is that BA5 means many of us are still going to get COVID, even if we take the precautions. That doesn't mean we're doing anything wrong.

That's because studies have shown that BA.5 is four times more resistant to vaccines, and it's also hyper-contagious. Not only is it more infectious, but your prior immunity doesn't count for as much as it used to. And that means that the old saw that I just had COVID a month ago. And so I have COVID immunity superpowers. I'm not going to get it again. That no longer holds. Nope, it doesn't.

That's Dr. Robert Wachter. He's a physician at the University of California, San Francisco. And he says, even if you've been vaccinated and boosted, this subvariant might still get you. And we're kind of already seeing that. VA5 is driving up reinfections and hospitalizations. But the good news is that fewer people are dying. Last winter, we had about 3,000 deaths a day. And now, the U.S. is averaging about 385 a day. Most people have some underlying immunity that is helpful in fighting the virus. We have

antivirals. And I think because of that, we're not seeing a rise in deaths. And that's very reassuring. That tells me that this virus, even BA5, is not so divergent that it is escaping all arms of the immune system. Anna Durbin, a physician at Johns Hopkins University, agrees that we are in a better place right now than we were a year ago. So the impact of a BA5 surge or whatever subvariant might come next likely won't be on the scale of the surges that we've seen in the past. The difference is vaccinations, of course, but also three new tools, free to all and widely available. You don't need to be president to get these tools used for your defense.

In fact, the same booster shots, the same at-home tests, the same treatment that I got is available to you. Consider this. VA5 is COVID's most transmissible version to date. It's also responsible for the current surge here in the U.S. And at a moment when many Americans have let their guard down, public health officials are debating how best to combat an ever-changing virus. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Thursday, July 28th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange

rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Here's the challenge for the Biden administration as BA5 cases climb. How do you protect people now, this summer, while also planning ahead for the winter, when the country is likely going to get hit with another surge. Well, this week, NPR learned that the administration may scrap its plans to authorize a second COVID booster to adults under 50 this summer and instead speed up availability of the new boosters this fall. These next generation boosters are designed to target BA5 specifically. And some people, like Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation,

think that's a smart move. I think this was the right call. If you get a booster now with the original formulation of the vaccine, this may in fact be counterproductive. It may prevent the second booster dose given this fall from taking and from you developing an immune response to that booster. But the issue with that is millions of Americans under 50 haven't been eligible for a second booster, even though the immunity they got from their first three shots has been wearing off. Now, the FDA could announce a decision on boosters this week. And among those closely watching is Dr. Robert Wachter, whom we heard from earlier. And his interest isn't just professional. Like millions of Americans,

he's also trying to navigate personally this current moment in the pandemic, like at a recent social event. I went to a college reunion of sorts this past weekend in Massachusetts. There were about 20 of us there. We tried very hard to do almost everything outside. Meals were outside, hanging out outside. And then there was a swarm of mosquitoes that descended and we went inside. And it was just kind of too awkward to wear a mask. I could have and maybe should have, but didn't and nor did my wife. A few days later, two of those 20 people tested

positive for COVID-19. Now, so far, Dr. Wachter doesn't believe he or his wife got COVID. Rapid tests were negative two days in a row. They don't have any symptoms. But for him, it drove home the fact that there is a lot of COVID going around right now. Well, cases are very high, and the numbers that you see in the newspaper are fakeouts because the cases look like they're one-fifth or seventh of what we saw in December, January. But think about the amount of home testing that doesn't get reported. The cases are probably about the same as they were during the peak of the Omicron surge over the winter. So I asked Dr. Wachter, does the administration's booster strategy make sense? Well, part of it does.

If there's a better booster on the horizon and the booster that combines the original and then a component of the booster that targets Omicron and specifically the BA.5 variant probably is going to be a better booster. So it makes all the sense in the world to get it done, get it approved, and get it out there as soon as possible. That's all fine. let's say a 40 or 45 year old whose first booster was eight or 10 months ago and therefore has a lot of waiting immunity that you should not get another booster now because this better booster might be out in a couple of months first of all i'm a little skeptical that it'll be what i'm thinking i'm 46 it has been seven months since my first booster shot i'm wondering if i should wait or just get a second booster if well the the federal government will weigh in on that decision. To me, my 32-year-old son called

me a couple of weeks ago and said, should I get a booster, a second booster if I can? And my answer to him was yes. And then he asked, well, I hear there's a better booster coming out. And I said, first of all, even if it comes out in September, which would be ambitious and impressive, you're not going to be first in line. You're going to be last in line. So it will go to older people first. It'll go to residents of nursing homes. It'll go to doctors and nurses first. You're probably not going to get your spot in line until November or December. And because the second booster really does restore your protection against severe infection and add some protection against all infections, and there's a lot of COVID around, I think the idea that people remain vulnerable for four or five months while we're waiting for

this better booster, I guess I think the better trade-off is go ahead and allow people who want it to get their second booster now. No question we should be getting this better booster out as soon as possible, but I think leaving large numbers of people potentially vulnerable for what's going to be three, four, five months, I think that feels like an error. Okay. So it sounds like, Dr. Wachter, that medically speaking, you totally recommend that adults under 50 who got their first booster more than six months ago should get a second booster now. But what about the fact that the federal government hasn't officially authorized the second booster for all adults under 50? Like, is there an ethical concern there that we should be thinking about? Yeah, it is tricky. You know, what I told my son was, you shouldn't lie, but if you have access to the booster, if you can walk into a pharmacy and they are giving it to you, I think the benefits

of taking it outweigh the risks. So I favorite making it an option, making it available to people under 50 and having them choose to get it. There's plenty of vaccine around, and we're probably going to be throwing out millions of vials, particularly if a new booster comes out and replaces the existing booster. So I don't see an ethical problem there because of scarcity. I don't encourage people to go out and violate the rules. But if you can go out and get it and the pharmacy will give it to you, I think it's reasonable to have it as an option. And I'd say if I were you and we're 46 and healthy and my last booster was a year ago, I would probably go ahead and get it. Can we talk about how truly effective that next generation booster will be? Because, I mean,

you know, these new vaccines that will hopefully come out in the fall, they're designed to target both the original strain of the virus and the Omicron subvariants BA4 and BA5. I mean, do we even know yet how well these new vaccines will work? We don't. They haven't been fully tested and we haven't seen the results yet. My guess is they will not be magic. My guess is they will have a little bit more efficacy against you getting infected with BA4 or 5, maybe bump the longevity of how long you're protected against infection. But I don't think it's going to be magic. The current booster, the evidence that the current booster

and getting a second booster with the current booster is really pretty strong. I mean, we really want to prevent people from getting super sick, going to the hospital and dying. And maybe the BA5 or this mixed booster will be somewhat better at that. But the booster that we have now works really well. The big risk is if you haven't gotten your second booster and your first booster was a year ago, you've lost a significant amount of efficacy with time. What can people do now to protect themselves, especially at this moment when the country feels just beyond ready to move past this pandemic, even though the pandemic is not over? What should people be thinking about besides boosters to make sure that they protect themselves and others?

Well, this is going to be a really boring answer because it really is the same as it's been for a couple of years. If there's a lot of COVID in the environment, and there is in most parts of the United States right now, if you want to be protected against getting COVID, you have to wear a good mask in crowded indoor spaces. Those are the places where you're most likely to get it. You need to pay a little bit of attention to distancing. If you are going to be indoors, particularly if you're maskless, you need to think about ventilation and making sure the space is well ventilated. So none of these things are fail-safe.

But if you do all of them, then there's a good chance you will remain COVID-free. And it's obviously an environment where people are not wearing masks. So when I get on an airplane in a few days, I know almost with certainty that someone on that plane will have COVID. I can't say whether that's the person sitting in the next seat, but they might be. So I am going to wear a KN95 for the entire flight. And that's because I still do not want to get COVID. Even with my four vaccine shots, I'm pretty confident I'm not going to die of it. But I still don't want to get it because I might feel crummy. I might get long COVID. I might increase my risk of having a heart

attack a year from now. All things that I really would prefer to avoid. That was Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.