Covid cases on the rise: Is it too late for a vaccine?

With Covid cases surging this summer, the upcoming rollout of updated vaccines in the fall raises an important question: Will they get here in time to make that difference? 
 
Unlike the flu, of which cases start appearing in the fall and rise to their highest in the winter and spring, covid waves have not been clearly seasonal. Annual flu shots that take more than two weeks to become effective are given usually in September or October. 
 
These are the new Covid vaccines that target the coronavirus’s newly identified Kinase-Phosphatase (KP). 2 is a further evolution of the strain that originated from the highly transmissible JN. The booster shots that target one variant that emerged last winter are also in the pipeline to be administered in the following weeks. 
 
And even if the vaccines are available within the next month, the immunologists and the specialists in infectious diseases do not estimate that they will have a considerable impact on the current Summer wave. The shots will be important, however, as the U. S. heads into the fall and winter, when cases usually rise again. 
 
“This has been the experience with past pandemics: If there is to be a new major wave of illness from Covid, the likelihood is rather greater that it will occur in the Fall,” Weill Cornell Medical College’s John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology said. “Could it have been planned before 20/20? It is also very difficult to demur on the current plan, because, notionally, it appears to be both rational and sensible. ” 
 
“You’re kind of damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” he offered. 
 
There has been information from the Center for Disease Control that Covid can flare up at any time in a year. But evidence from the four years of Covid reveals it does, especially in winter, December and January, and in July and August which is middle of summer in many countries. According to the CDC’s wastewater data tracker, cases begun surging in June 2024 and are still high. 
 
However, the Food and Drug Administration has been adjusting its working similar to how the annual flu shot is updated with another wave. Sometime in the spring, vaccine experts choose the Covid strain to be used in a campaign in the following fall. 
 
It would have been ideal for public health officials to ensure that Covid vaccines are being given just before the onset of waves to prevent transmission, infection, as well as severe illness, Iwasaki noted. 
 
But until the U. S. can perfect this timing, ‘Maybe it would be best for now to use two boosters per year, one in the early summer and another in the fall,’ she said, noting that ‘what is the window of time for administering the booster in the fall is a good but still a difficult question. 
 
She said: “Of course, such boosters have to be well matched to the circulating variant. ” 
 
This is indeed the case, for in February the FDA and CDC did advise a booster for those most vulnerable to the severe forms of Covid: these include people of over 65 years of age. This was to be prepared for another wave of the virus in the summer as experienced earlier in the year. Less than one-third of adults 65 and older received the two-dose 2023-24 booster, and a summer surge occurred regardless. 
 
In this previous autumn, when the CDC data on hospitalisations went up, certain physicians accused the FDA of delaying the launch of the improved Covid vaccines. 
 
Has the FDA mandated that the vaccine programme for the fall be undertaken mid September? 
 
Resp to an emailed query sent to the agency by NBC News, an FDA official referred the news outlet to comments made by CDC epidemiologist Ruth Link-Gelles during a June meeting of the FDA’s advisory committee. Link-Gelles noted that one of the critical questions asked in the reporting of Covid vaccines was the proportion of people who received the vaccines at the proper time. 
 
“On flu and RSV, we have many years of records, and the patterns we are seeing are more or less the same,” she said. “Well, you can’t measure those time quite so precisely and know exactly when those seasons are going to begin, but you can get pretty close to it For Covid that doesn’t apply at all We have seen upticks in summer, in August the last couple of years And so it becomes sort of a guessing game to try to time the introduction of Covid vaccines. ” 
 
I’m fairly certain that the majority, if not all, young, healthy individuals, with a cleanly bill of health – including negative antibody tests – would not require more than a single Covid shot per annum, as an infectious disease specialist positioned at the University of Toronto, Dr. Isaac Bogoch suggested. 
 
“Well, as I said, I don’t know how it is possible to generalize about over 300 million people,” he said. “Some of the people with a high risk for a severe Covid should get a booster before their last shot and those who have had a long interval between the current time and the previous vaccines might be in that group, in which case, a vaccine is a good idea before the campaign in the fall”. 
 
A person’s immunity that is developed after an infection will depend on the severity of the infection, the variant and the age and overall health of the individual. Research has indicated that protection can also may for up to three months and above. 
 
Dr. Ofer Levy, the director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, cautioned that his and future covid breakthrough infections could not be explanations of malpractice or give people a false sense of security when they contact the virus in the summer wave. 
 
Vaccines will still be relevant in the sense that even if a person contracts the virus, the disease will remain dangerous regardless of the redundancy of the term coined as ‘herd immunity,’ said Levy. 
 
“Is there some sort of immunity from natural infection? You bet your sweet life there is,” Levy said. Indeed, it is not to the same extent provided by vaccines. ” 
 
Moore at Weill Cornell argues that the FDA does well to maintain the fall schedule. 
 
“I’m not minimizing what is happening at present, but if there will be a higher increase, it will be at the later part of the year,” Moore said.