Get your omicron-specific Covid booster by Halloween, says Dr. Jha: ‘You don’t want to be that person who gives it to your grandma’

There is an easy deadline for when you should get the new booster shot.

What is the reason for Halloween? Three weeks after Halloween is Thanksgiving, and there's a lot of travel, and you're seeing family and friends, and a few weeks later, it's the holidays.

Respiratory viruses circulate in the fall and winter. It is a great time to protect yourself. Even if you are on the low-risk side, you will still have family and friends around. If you give it to your grandma, you don't want to be the one who gets it.

The new shots from Pfizer and Moderna, which target both the original Covid strain and omicron's BA.5 and BA.4 sub-variants, are available to a wide swath of Americans who have received their primary vaccine series.

You may want to get the new shot earlier than Halloween if you have a high risk of Covid. Those with underlying medical conditions are also included.

If you only recently got a Covid vaccine, you may want to wait a bit. If you have recently had the Covid virus, the CDC recommends that you wait at least two months out from your last dose of the vaccine.

After an injection, covid shots take two or three weeks to fully protect. It takes about three or four months for that protection to go away.

People should not wait until late November and December to get the new shot, according to Jha. When immunity from previous vaccines fades and people spend a lot more time indoors, the doses will serve as an extra layer of protection.

The cold and dry weather makes it easier for small droplets of the virus to survive when people sneeze, cough or talk. The number of new U.S. cases rose to a record high in December of 2021. There was a surge in cases in the late 2020s.

During the fall and winter social gatherings, you can still spread the virus to high-risk loved ones even if you don't get it yourself.

He said that you don't want to be the person who gives it to your friend who's sick. There are lots of good reasons to get it this fall.

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