And that's primarily determined by your age, also by your degree of immunosuppression, so if you're a very immunosuppressed individual, that is clearly an issue.Īnd the third thing you need to do is to stay alert and to realize, you know, you may put yourself at risk. It's actually because your risk of developing severe disease is high. And I remind people that treatment is not because your symptoms are severe. And if you test positive for COVID and you are at high risk - if you're over the age of 60, over the age of 65 - go ahead and start therapy because, you know, treatment with Paxlovid makes a huge difference. Number two, order your free COVID tests and keep them at home. And if you're over the age of 65 and you already received one more than four months ago, you need to get a second one. Number one is you need to be up to date on your vaccinations which means if you have not received a bivalent booster, you need to get one. RASCOE: So looking ahead, what should people be doing to keep themselves safe, you know, especially folks who are at a higher risk of getting very sick from COVID?ĭEL RIO: Well, I think I tell people that they need to do the following things. As long as there's treatments available - and there's still plenty of treatments available - if you get a prescription from your doctor and May 12 you go to the drugstore to get, you know, your Paxlovid or any other medication for COVID, it's still going to be available for free. Go to the government's site, get your four COVID tests that you can get before May 11 and keep them at home. But this is an issue that, you know, I tell people, you still have a few days. And depending on your insurance, your insurance may pay for it, may not pay for it. At-home testing, those over-the-counter tests, are not going to be for free anymore. How about home testing? What's going to happen? Well, something is changing. As long as there is a supply, nothing is changing. What's going to happen on May 12? The availability and access to vaccines and boosters for free continues to exist. ![]() You know, the Biden administration is ending, as you say, the public health emergency on May 11. And virtually nobody has received a second bivalent booster, which they should. And among those over the age of 65, only 46% have received one bivalent booster. And furthermore, the people that I worry the most about are those over the age of 65. population has received their bivalent booster. The challenge, though, is that it - CDC recently changed the recommendations and said in order to be up to date in your immunizations, you need to have received the bivalent booster. Number one, we have a lot of immunity, and we call this a immunological wall. But let me try to to break it down for your audience. Is Arcturus a threat to those very promising statistics and to the end of the public health emergency?ĭEL RIO: That's a very complicated question. The Biden administration says it's ending the public health emergency later this week. RASCOE: So nearly 70% of Americans are now vaccinated, and COVID deaths are down by 95% since January 2021. ![]() So if you have a kid and the kid has pinkeye, you need to think about COVID as being one of the possible diagnoses. And the other symptom that is seen and is primarily being seen in children is conjunctivitis - is pinkeye. During omicron, that loss of sense of taste and smell kind of disappeared. But there's something that has come back. Are there any symptoms associated with Arcturus that may be different from omicron and other variants?ĭEL RIO: Symptoms that we see with this variant include very high fever, cough, cold-like symptoms. RASCOE: You said that it doesn't produce more serious illness. And it doesn't produce more severe disease, and we need to say that. So what we're going to see is, over the next several months and into the summer, this will become the dominant variant in the United States. It's about 1.2 times more infectious, more transmissible, than prior variants. And what's interesting about this variant is it has certain mutations that make it more transmissible. How is Arcturus different from other variants and subvariants that we've seen in the past?ĭEL RIO: You know, this strain is being monitored very carefully just because it's rapidly growing and now represents about 15% of strains isolated in the United States. RASCOE: So let's start with the basics here. Thank you for coming back to the program.ĬARLOS DEL RIO: Delighted to be with you. Carlos del Rio teaches medicine at Emory University, and he joins us now. Arcturus, scientifically known as XBB.1.16, is a subvariant of omicron and was first found in India this January and was declared a variant of interest by the World Health Organization last month. ![]() It's been a while since we've talked variants, and there's a new one.
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