‘There’s a lot of Covid going around’: US summer surge not taken seriously enough – experts
Infectious disease experts say many people are not taking the recent wave of Covid-19 in the US seriously enough and are not getting vaccinated or taking antiviral drugs when they are sick, even though the summer wave was larger and came earlier than expected.
Epidemiologists say that while symptoms in this wave are milder than previous variants, the virus still poses a threat, especially to older adults and people with underlying health conditions.
In response, public health officials are urging people to get a booster now — unless they recently had Covid, in which case they should wait three to four months — and take a rapid test if they are sick. And if they do have Covid, they should ask their doctors for antiviral treatments.
“There’s a lot of Covid out there,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “If you have symptoms, get tested, because it can be helpful to take medication. At the very least, you can find out if you have it and stay home so you don’t spread it to others.”
Notably, Covid viral activity in wastewater in the United States in August was nearly twice as high as the same period last year and roughly equal to the peak seen in summer 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. facts. Still, hospital admissions And deaths are a fraction of what they were in 2022.
“Any time someone gets sick there is always a risk, but ultimately we look at the fact that we have not seen a huge increase in hospitalizations or deaths because this virus is not going away,” Nuzzo said.
Justin Lessler, a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina, attributes the unexpectedly high surge to new variants that have “escaped our immune systems a little bit faster than we expected” and to people being less cautious about the virus than in previous years.
If someone develops symptoms of Covid — such as a fever, cough or sore throat — he or she should get tested, even if he or she is not concerned, Lessler said.
“It’s more about civility now than about direct impact on public health,” Lessler said. That means considering “people who are at high risk or more concerned about the disease than others.”
The Biden administration recently announced that it will launch a new campaign. free Covid-19 tests available end of September. US households can order four Covid tests from Covidtests.gov.
Testing when you develop symptoms is also important because antiviral drugs like Paxlovid are most effective when taken early in the course of an illness. Despite the drugs’ benefits, to research have shown that they are underutilized.
“I think physicians, like the public, have come to view Covid as just one of those things, as opposed to something that can be responded to quickly and proactively with antivirals where needed,” said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
Although the virus is no longer as dangerous as it was at the height of the pandemic, Covid can still cause serious symptoms.
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved new vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. The epidemiologists advise people to get the booster now instead of waiting until closer to winter.
Hanage worries that “people will not take advantage of the protection available and that we will end up with more severe illness, more hospitalizations and more deaths than necessary.”
Nuzzo said she won’t argue with young people who feel they are at risk of contracting Covid, but she does want to ensure that older adults who are at high risk get vaccinated.
“There is a clear advantage,” Nuzzo said.
Epidemiologists have no conclusive answers to the question of what the Covid numbers will look like in the fall and winter.
“I think there’s a small chance that it will be on the small side because the summer surge was so big, but that said, we haven’t had a winter without a surge,” Lessler said. “I don’t see any reason why that should change.”