WASHINGTON — Americans should expect yet another update of the COVID-19 vaccine this fall at about the same time as flu shots are available, the top U.S. public health official said Monday.
Researchers are working on selecting a strain for the upcoming version, and will probably wait until May to pick one to target with vaccines, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen said in an interview at Bloomberg’s offices in Washington.
Cohen took the helm at the CDC in July, just weeks after the U.S. ended the emergency declaration that gave the agency special powers to address the COVID crisis. As COVID death rates and hospitalizations quickly recede, the focus remains on making sure that vulnerable Americans continue to get vaccine protection, Cohen said.
“Folks should anticipate that when they get their flu shot, they’ll get an updated COVID shot as well,” Cohen said in the interview.
Children’s recommendations
CDC is unlikely to pull back on its COVID vaccine recommendations for children, Cohen said, even though the virus broadly impacts kids less than in the past. Young children, along with the elderly, still make up a large proportion of those hospitalized for the disease, she said.
“We want to make sure we’re still protecting our kids from COVID and the flu,” she said in the interview.
With concerns about the virus abating, the CDC issued updated guidance Friday, saying that people with COVID whose symptoms are improving and have been fever-free for 24 hours without medication can return to work, school or other public places. The recommendation puts the pandemic virus alongside influenza and RSV that aren’t considered national emergencies, though they can be lethal in some vulnerable people.
“It bows to reality,” said Bill Hanage, a professor at Harvard University School of Public Health. “Very few people are actually observing those isolation polices and moreover, some people might not be willing to take a test if they need to isolate.”
The CDC guidance scraps the earlier recommendation for five days of isolation following a positive test, mirroring public health policies in Oregon and California, where strict isolation periods for COVID infections were recently abandoned. At least nine states have already amended their COVID policies since the CDC issued its guidance Friday, while officials in other states said they’re reviewing the new recommendations.
Maternal mortality
“I am happy to see the CDC guidance that harmonizes the approach and gives people concrete information of what they can do everyday,” said Dean Sidelinger, Oregon’s state epidemiologist. The state was the first to remove the five-day isolation guideline after finding it wasn’t slowing community spread, he said.
The CDC also recommended last week that people 65 years and older get a second dose of the latest version of the COVID vaccine, which was made available last fall. Only 39% of adults 65 years and older have received the first dose of the 2023-24 annual vaccine, according to the CDC.
While tweaking the response to the coronavirus, Cohen is now focusing on longstanding functions such as bolstering state and local health infrastructure and responding to crises like the epidemic of opioid-related deaths. Cohen also said the agency will expand its collection of data on maternal mortality to all 50 states.
Access to care for pregnancy-related conditions has been called into question after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision that eliminated access to abortion in some states. About half of the annual 6.1 million U.S. pregnancies are unintended, and advocates continue to tussle over access to birth control.
“We definitely continue to track data,” showing the impact of the Dobbs decision, Cohen said, “but I don’t think yet we’re at that place where we can compare pre and post.”
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