Dr. Klotman’s Week 187 update on the US COVID epidemic makes the following important points.
- COVID hospitalizations and deaths remain flat.
- The burden of COVID continues to fall disproportionately among senior citizens.
- Wastewater viral loads are flat or falling in some areas – Houston, for one.
- Studies of the new, mono-valent m-RNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna show that the vaccines, based on the XBB.1.5 strain confer a good response to infection with descendant XBB COVID strains like EG.1.5 and XBB.1.16.6 and others that are the most common circulating strains in the US.
Not included in Dr. Klotman’s update is the fact that as of this week, only 8 million Americans have taken the latest COVID vaccine. That’s just shy of 3% of the 330 million Americans. We can only hope that the other 97% has either had the full series of older COVID shots and/or survived natural infection.
Alas! 🙁