With Thanksgiving just two weeks away, people who are eligible for an updated Covid-19 vaccine booster but still haven’t received the shot will need to roll up their sleeves Thursday to get as much protection as possible before the holiday.

Health officials are worried about a possible surge in respiratory illnesses this winter – including Covid-19, flu, RSV and rhinoviruses – and they are urging people who are not up-to-date on their Covid-19 shots to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

“The way it makes protection is to create these proteins, which we call antibodies, that then circulate in the bloodstream. Well, that can’t be done with a snap of the finger. There’s a biological process that takes place,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

Read more at CNN.

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 and flu are rising in Colorado at the same time, while a respiratory virus that primarily harms children is already pushing pediatric hospitals to the brink.

As of Tuesday afternoon, 320 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Colorado, which was a “pretty dramatic” increase from 218 at this time last week, state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy said. Cases and the percentage of tests coming back positive also have risen, suggesting the virus is spreading more widely, she said.

Since the start of October, 92 people in Colorado have been hospitalized with flu, Herlihy said. That’s still a relatively low level, but more than the state usually sees this early in the season, she said.

Read more at The Denver Post.

An alarming number of Colorado children with the respiratory virus called RSV are filling emergency rooms and intensive care beds as the state experiences an “early and intense” start to the flu season, state health officials and Children’s Hospital Colorado warned Wednesday.

“It’s truly like nothing we’ve ever seen before at Children’s Hospital Colorado,” said Dr. Kevin Carney, a pediatric emergency physician and Children’s associate chief medical officer.

The hospital’s in-patient and ICU beds across the state are operating at or above maximum capacity, and emergency room and urgent care visits for respiratory illness are 30% higher than the busiest days of a normal flu season, which typically runs January through March.

Read more at The Colorado Sun.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend asked me how many COVID shots I’d gotten so far. And for a brief, wonderful moment, I forgot.

“Three,” I told them, before shaking my head. “No, actually, four.” I had no trouble recalling when I’d received my most recent shot (September). But it took me a moment to tabulate all the doses that had preceded it.

By this point in the pandemic, a lot of people must be losing track. “I actually think this is a good thing,” says Grace Lee, a pediatrician at Stanford, and the chair of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Now that so many Americans have racked up several shots or infections, she told me, the question is no longer “‘How many doses have you gotten cumulatively?’ It’s ‘Are you up to date for the season?’”

Read more at The Atlantic.

El Buen Samaritano, an Episcopal outreach ministry in Texas, serves the east side of Austin, the poorer of the two sides of the city split by I-35. There are fewer services there, including many neighborhoods that don’t have a health center. The population is mainly people of color, many whose first language is Spanish. It’s the kind of population that has low Covid vaccination rates.

But El Buen has been able to prove that at least as far as Austin goes, the issue is not fear of the vaccine itself. “This is all about access,” Luis Garcia, director of technology and analytics for El Buen, told me. Its food pantry gets about 200 visits every day it’s open, many from families who return week after week. Each of those food pickups is a chance for El Buen staff members to talk to them about the vaccine, Mr. Garcia speaking in Spanish as he hands them bags of groceries and whole watermelons. The organization has also plastered social media, put out radio spots in Spanish and hung fliers in other food pantries.

Read more at The New York Times.

In late October, the Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota posted a video he knew would be controversial.

“I’ve been called extreme, and perhaps this Facebook video will provide fodder for more people to call me extreme,” the candidate, Scott Jensen, told his viewers. In the 20 minutes that followed, Jensen railed against COVID vaccine mandates for kids, questioned the CDC’s vaccination schedule for other childhood immunizations, and raised other vague concerns about COVID vaccines that have been credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

“I think in terms of safety, the question is still out there,” he said.

The 2022 midterm elections will be like no other: Hundreds of candidates on the ballot this year challenge or deny the results of the previous election. But alongside these false narratives, candidates on the political right are also pushing conspiracies about vaccines.

Read more at NPR.

An experimental RSV vaccine for pregnant women from Pfizer is effective at protecting newborns against severe illness for at least six months, the company said in a press release Tuesday.

In a phase 3 study, the Pfizer vaccine was about 82% effective against severe illness from respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, in the first 90 days of life in babies born to vaccinated women, according to the company. The vaccine was also about 70% effective against severe infections through the first six months of life.

Protection against any RSV infection was lower: about 57% in the first 90 days and about 51% in the first six months.

Read more at NBC.

You know all those questions about whether you should wait until a few weeks before flu season starts to get vaccinated against the flu? Well, forget the wait. The flu season has already arrived in the U.S., this year starting over a month earlier than usual. And there are signs that the coming months could be a big flu you to America. According to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report called Fluview, this season has had at least 880,000 flu illnesses, 6,900 flu-related hospitalizations, and 360 flu-related deaths including one child to date in the U.S. Such numbers far exceed the numbers seen at the same time of the year in 2021 and 2020. In fact, the cumulative hospitalization rate for this past week—the 42nd week of 2022—-has been higher than the rate for the 42nd week of any year since 2010.

Angela Rasmussen, PhD, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, tweeted about this bad start to the flu season—bad if you are human but good if you are the influenza virus:

Read more at Forbes.

Chickenpox, called varicella by scientists, is a formerly ubiquitous childhood illness that produces a characteristic vesicular rash of varying extent and severity. In earlier days, chickenpox affected almost every child. however, the incidence of this condition has dropped steeply following the introduction of varicella-zoster vaccines.

The illness is caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VZV), an alphaherpesvirus. After causing chickenpox of varying intensity during the primary attack, the virus hibernates in the sensory ganglia and may persist for a lifetime. Immunological compromise may lead to the reactivation of the virus, causing herpes zoster (commonly called shingles).

Introduction

Chickenpox is a benign and self-resolving condition in most pediatric cases and even among most adults. However, a small minority may develop serious complications, and some may die. Varicella complicating pregnancy could sometimes lead to birth defects, with about one in 2000 live-born babies born to such women showing signs of congenital varicella.  

Read more at News Medical.

Covid isn’t the only viral threat facing the U.S. this coming winter. A “tripledemic” also involving flu and RSV may soon unfold, says Dr. Ashish Jha.

But there’s good news: “We’re not powerless against it,” Jha, the White House’s Covid response coordinator, said in a Tuesday interview with CBS News.

Covid has been a prominent winter threat during the last two years and is expected to wreak havoc again this year, especially with the emergence of so-called “Scrabble” variants that appear adept at evading immunity from vaccines and prior infection.

The U.S. is also seeing an early uptick in flu cases, which don’t typically rise until late December. The country’s South Central and Southeastern regions already have positivity rates as high as 10%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read more at CNBC.