Bivalent COVID omicron booster rollout progresses slowly in Sarasota-Manatee
Clarification: People who have had previous COVID-19 booster shots can the bivalent booster as soon as two months after their last shot or wait a few months longer, depending on risk factors. A previous version of this story listed a different time frame.
If everyone who gets an annual flu shot also gets vaccinated with the new bivalent COVID-19 omicron booster, more than 10,000 lives could be saved nationwide.
That was the message delivered Wednesday by Dr. Manuel Gordillo, medical director of Sarasota Memorial Hospital Infection Prevention and Control in an online news conference update on the current status of the pandemic and potential impact of the latest COVID vaccine.
Gordillo attributed that projection to modeling done on the benefits of the new bivalent vaccine – which targets both the original COVID-19 virus as well the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron variants that emerged last November.
“They’ve done modeling to try to ascertain how much benefit there is at the population level and models are out there that estimates that if we do the same number of vaccinations for COVID as we do for flu, there will be an excess of 10,000 deaths prevented in the United States and about 130,000 hospitalizations prevented – if we do everybody that gets a flu vaccine (also) gets a COVID vaccine,” Gordillo said.
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A key aspect of the technology used to develop the COVID-19 vaccines is the speed and flexibility with which scientists can update the vaccines.
“That’s the beauty about this MRNA platform, you can create it really fast,” Gordillo said, referring to the way scientists teach the body’s cells how to make a protein to trigger an immune response. “We have the technology to modify based on the variant that’s available.”
In contrast, Gordillo said, it takes about a year to develop a new conventional flu vaccine.
Fast-track development
In June, researchers were working on a BA.1 vaccine and the bivalent formula wasn’t available.
On Aug. 31 the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization to bivalent booster shots from Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna, and on Sept. 1, the Centers for Disease Control endorsed use of the new boosters.
Rollout of the new vaccines started just before Labor Day weekend, though the shots are still being distributed to area pharmacies.
CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and Winn-Dixie will all stock the new bivalent booster shots.
Representatives from Publix did not respond to a query about whether the supermarket chain would provide the bivalent booster.
The federal website, https://www.vaccines.gov, on Wednesday night listed only one location with the Pfizer booster in stock, SRQ Care Compounding Pharmacy, while the Moderna booster was listed as available at that pharmacy, as well as seven Walgreens in Sarasota County and Lemon Bay Drugs, East.
The site urges people to check back often as more vaccines arrive in the area.
When the bivalent vaccine is available, it is OK to get both that booster and a flu shot – one in each arm.
“The CDC hasn’t come out and said that’s the way they were going to promote it but I think it would be a wise move,” Gordillo said.
Gordillo noted that when he checked a local pharmacy Saturday, vaccines had not yet arrived.
“It’s just very early in the vaccination process, the distribution channels are very active right now and I’m not sure when it will be easily available,” he added.
The Pfizer booster is authorized for use in people ages 12 and older, while the Moderna booster is only available for adults ages 18 and up.
People who have recently been infected by COVID-19 should wait at least three months before getting a bivalent booster shot.
“It gives your immune system some time to mature its response to the real virus,” Gordillo said.
People who have had previous COVID-19 booster shots can the bivalent booster as soon as two months after their last shot or wait a few months longer, depending on risk factors.
Other factors ranging from age and comorbidities to contact with high risk people and plans to attend weddings and other large functions may prompt someone to get vaccinated sooner rather than later.
“All those things need to be considered when you get your vaccine,” Gordillo said.
Hidden suffering
Gordillo started his briefing by noting that there’s an incongruence between prevailing thoughts about where the country is with respect to the pandemic and the reality of the virus.
With the increased immunity at large because of either vaccinations or infection, he noted that there’s a prevailing thought that society is moving towards normalcy.
“The virus has other ideas, the virus says we’re not done, I’m still mutating, I’m still infecting people a lot,” Goridillo said
He pointed to the recent decrease in life expectancy for 2000-22 that mirrors a significant drop after the 1918 Spanish fu pandemic.
“The last 2 1/2 years there’s been a loss of three years of life expectancy in the United States – from 79 to 76,” Gordillo added.
More than 1 million deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 – numbers that Gordillo said are hard for many to fathom.
“It’s a historic, massive amount of suffering that we went through,” he added.
At Sarasota Memorial Hospital, more than 700 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19.
“We’re going to have to deal with the PTSD that this has elicited in all of us,” Gordillo said. “For all of us in healthcare it’s probably worse, because most people didn’t see all this suffering; the suffering was hiding in the hospitals.
“You go to Peru and other places, where people are dying at home from asphyxia, we were spared that,” he added. “The majority of the deaths occurred in nursing homes, occurred in hospitals and no one saw that in the public.”
Currently numbers have been down and it’s possible that the next few months could be relatively quiet but health care officials are preparing for a likely winter surge.
The depth and length of that surge depend on factors ranging from how people congregate up north, as immunity wanes to another mutation of the virus.
“Last Thanksgiving nobody knew about omicron and it hit us like a ton of bricks,” Gordillo said.
It isn't clear how vaccine skepticism and outright opposition to getting the vaccine on a portion of the U.S. population would affect the projections Gordillo referenced.
According to the Centers for Disease Control COVID Data Tracker, 79.2% of the population in the U.S. has received at least one dose of the vaccine; 67.5% are considered fully vaccinated, with two doses; 48.5% have received one booster. Only 34% of the population age 50 and younger have had a second booster, while 41.2% of the population age 65 and older have had two boosters.
In Sarasota County, 84.1% of the population has received t least one dose; 71.2% are fully vaccinated; 51.8% have received one booster. For people age 50 and younger, 39.1% of the population have received a second booster and 43.8% age 65 and older have had a second booster.
In Manatee County, 73.2% of the population has received one dose; 63.2% are fully vaccinated; 46.4% have received one booster. Only 35.2% of the population age 50 and younger have had a second booster, while 41% of the population age 65 and older have had a second booster.
Gordillo said that while there will always be people who refuse to get vaccinated because of personal beliefs or reasons, he was happy to see recent CDC poll results that indicated 78% of the respondents were either going to take the bivalent vaccine or were likely to do so.
Gordillo noted the proven safety record of MRNA vaccines to date (nearly 600 million COVID MRNA vaccines given up to this point).
“It will benefit you as an individual by providing you with needed extra protection and will benefit your community be decreasing hospitalization, deaths and costs,” Gordillo said.
Future developments
The future of COVID-19 vaccinations lies in people being urged to get annual shots on a schedule similar to flu shots – a philosophy that the Biden administration espoused this month. “They realize we cannot be boosting the population multiple times a year, that’s a strategy that’s not going to work,” Gordillo said.
In the immediate future, an annual bivalent booster would be crafted to counteract the anticipated COVID-19 variant.
That may proceed for at least the next two years, Gordillo said, but scientists are working toward developing a pan-coronavirus vaccine.
“People are working on this,” Gordillo said. “But we still don’t have that technology to get us there, to have a vaccine that’s there for all future variants.”
He added that immunologists think that level of sophistication is three to five years from becoming a reality.
Scientists are also working on a vaccine that could be administered by the nose and the mouth that could attack the virus when it enters the system.
This week both India and China approved vaccines of that type, Gordillo noted, with China claiming a better efficacy rate than its first generation vaccine
He added that United States-based research is farther behind that, in part because of a lower priority in funding.
Earle Kimel primarily covers south Sarasota County for the Herald-Tribune and can be reached at earle.kimel@heraldtribune.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription to the Herald-Tribune.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota, Manatee rollout for COVID omicron booster progresses slowly
