Upgraded Covid-19 Boosters Could Save 90,000 American Lives This Winter—If We Get Them

The toll of covid-19 in the U.S. will depend on how many Americans are willing to get an upgraded booster shot. Researchers with the Commonwealth Fund think that a moderately successful booster campaign could save tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Booster rates are currently abysmal.

The ability of the original vaccines to prevent illness from the coronaviruses has been weakened due to the passage of time. The first round of booster doses have lowered the odds of serious outcomes from infections for people at higher risk, such as the elderly.

The Commonwealth Fund is a nonprofit organization focused on health care reform. An update to a similar analysis was done in July.

The researchers plotted out three forecasts for the country, assuming that covid cases will increase again this winter. The current rate of Americans getting boosted would not change. Half of eligible people would be boosted by the end of the year, similar to the rate of seasonal flu vaccination during the 2020 to 2021 winter. 80% of eligible Americans got the booster in the last.

The country would once again experience a wave of death and illness under the status quo according to the researchers. At its peak, covid-19 would kill up to 1,200 Americans a day, while hospitalizing another 16,000. Last winter saw a sustained average of over 2,000 deaths a day and nearly 150,000 Americans hospitalized at any one time. The daily deaths would be kept below 400 under either scenario.

The 50% vaccine scenario was estimated to result in 75,347 fewer deaths, 745,409 fewer hospitalizations, and 19 million fewer infections. Direct medical costs could range from $44 billion to $56 billion.

The recent FDA approval of bivalent boosters offers an opportunity to curb transmission and a vaccine campaign that moves aggressively could avert a surge of hospitalizations and deaths.

Many of the assumptions made in these forecasts might lead to a conservative estimate of the benefits provided by a successful booster campaign, according to the authors.

Research suggests that the upgraded shots should provide even stronger protection against the current version of the coronaviruses than the original boosters. The authors assumed that the protection provided by the original boosters would be the same as it was last winter. If a new variant better at evading previous immunity emerges, covid-19 cases may be higher than they predicted. The potential impact of long covid wasn't looked at in the analysis.

Even a modest booster campaign isn't certain as things stand now. Around 5% of eligible Americans have received upgraded boosters. It is recommended that people wait at least three months after their last covid 19 case to get a new booster. Less than half of Americans have gotten their first booster, making the U.S. the worst at boosting its residents. A recent survey shows that almost half of Americans plan to get the upgraded boosters.

The authors caution that we are going to see a lot of preventable deaths and hospitalizations this winter without a more dedicated effort to promote and deliver those shots.

Surges in hospitalizations and deaths are likely to occur during the upcoming fall and winter due to population immunity waning and the emergence of new variant that can evade protection from earlier vaccines. Funding for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments has been stagnant.