You will be hard pressed to find a better Black Friday deal than a COVID-19 bivalent booster shot.
They are free! And new data shows bivalent mRNA booster formulations provide significant additional protection against symptomatic COVID-19 infections.
The new data prompted Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to say, “Please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself, your family and your community.”
The new data comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is the first real-world data on bivalent boosters authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in late August. The real-world data are data relating to patient health status after having received bivalent boosters.
The CDC study analyzed 360,000 viral tests from adults from Sept. 14 to Nov. 11. It examined several things including the odds of symptomatic infection in people who received bivalent boosters with those who reported being unvaccinated.
Compared with people who were unvaccinated, adults 18 to 49 who received bivalent boosters were 43% less likely to get sick with a COVID-19 infection. Those ages 50 to 64 were 28% less likely, and those ages 65 and up were 22% less likely to get sick with COVID-19 than the unvaccinated group.
Dr. Ruth Link-Gelles, a CDC epidemiologist, said she expects vaccine protection against hospitalization and death will be even higher, but that data isn’t available yet.
Everyone age 5 and older is encouraged to get up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines and receive a bivalent booster to protect themselves and their loved ones during the holiday season.
Free COVID-19 vaccines and boosters are available at pharmacies and health centers across Hawai‘i. You can schedule a vaccination appointment at https://www.vaccines.gov.
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