92% of Americans have yet to get a bivalent COVID-19 booster, but Pfizer says this new vaccine triggers a stronger immune response than a fourth dose of their original vaccine.
this week show that 8.4% of eligible Americans have received the bivalent vaccine. The agency also estimates about 2,500 Americans are dying from COVID every week.
Until recently, the BA.5 Omicron variant was the dominant strain in the United States but is now getting elbowed out by the subvariants BQ.1.1, BQ.1, and BA.4.6, which together"It is important to note that these data are press-release level, which does not allow a view of the data totality," says Hana El Sahly, MD, professor of molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX.
"In the short term, a variant-specific vaccine produces a higher level of antibody against the variant in the vaccine than the vaccines based on the ancestral strains.""These data do not indicate that these differences between the two vaccines translate into a meaningful clinical benefit at a population level," El Sahly says.
It is unclear when the next surge will happen, as COVID-19 does not always follow a seasonal pattern -- at least not yet, El Sahly says.
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