COVID-19 Updates

CDC Recommends COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for 65-Plus, Nursing Home Residents, Immunocompromised, and Front Line Workers

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky accepted her advisory committee's recommendations to give the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to a wide array of Americans, including those ages 65 and older, people who live in long-term care facilities, those 50 to 64 with underlying medical conditions and people ages 18 to 64 with underlying medical conditions, depending on their individual risk of illness. But in a highly unusual move, Walensky overruled the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and added approval for people ages 18 to 64 whose job put them at high risk for contracting or transmitting the coronavirus.

The Pfizer boosters will be available to these groups six months after they received their second shot at health clinics, pharmacies and doctors' offices. CDC officials say there is ample supply for the vaccine to provide initial doses to unvaccinated Americans as well as the boosters. Doctor prescriptions will not be required to get the third shot.

4 Things to Know About the Mu Variant
Delta still dominates, but researchers are keeping a close eye on another coronavirus strain  

Even as delta continues to plow a path of destruction across the U.S., health experts are keeping a close eye on a new variant, called mu. While its presence pales in comparison to delta’s — mu makes up roughly 0.5 percent of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., while delta accounts for about 99 percent — “it certainly has some features that are concerning,” says John O’Horo, M.D., a critical care and infectious disease specialist at Mayo Clinic.

Here’s what we know so far about the mu variant:
1) Experts say mu isn’t an immediate threat - “We’re paying attention to it,” Anthony Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a recent coronavirus task force briefing. “We take everything like that seriously, but we don’t consider it an immediate threat right now.”

2) Mu’s mutations could become problematic - The reason researchers are keeping a close eye on mu is because it has “a constellation of mutations” that suggest it could cause some trouble for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, Fauci noted during the briefing. And some of these viral mutations are around the spike protein — a feature that allows the coronavirus to enter the cells in the body and cause an infection, O’Horo explains. 

3) It’s too early to know if mu is the next delta - Mu may be the dominant variant in Colombia, but Fauci has said it’s “not at all even close to being dominant,” in the U.S. And “there are a lot of factors that would have to happen for that to be the case,” Durbin adds.

4) Vaccines can help keep other variants from popping up - The more the virus spreads, the more opportunities it has to change. And it may be that one day, a new variant pops up with the ability to evade the current tools we have to fight it.

The vaccines, however, help to halt the spread of the virus, thereby hindering its ability to mutate — so do masks and other layers of prevention, such as keeping a safe distance from others and avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated indoor settings.  

“The most important thing we can do to protect against any variant, be it delta, mu, or C.1.2 [another emerging variant], is to get vaccinated,” Fauci said.