New Booster Works Against Dominant Covid Strain
A new CDC study has found that the Covid-19 bivalent booster reduces the risk of symptomatic infection from the most common subvariant circulating in the U.S. right now by about half.
Additional new data, set to be published on the CDC website on Wednesday, also shows that individuals who received an updated vaccine reduced their risk of death by nearly 13 fold, when compared to the unvaccinated, and by two fold when compared to those with at least one monovalent vaccine but no updated booster.
Meanwhile, the highly transmissible Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 — nicknamed “the Kraken” by some — is now the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain in the U.S., projected by the CDC to make up just over 49 percent of cases in the country as of last week.
There has been a spike in deaths this month, with an average of 564 people dying of Covid-19 each day as of Jan. 18, compared with an average of 384 around the same time in December.
❋Only 15.3 percent of eligible Americans have received the new shot.
