What It Will Take to Avoid a Tripledemic This Winter

Over the coming months, more than 100,000 Americans will likely die, mostly unnecessarily, from respiratory infections. Yes, that is the reality we are now facing this fall and winter—and likely every fall and winter for the foreseeable future. Unless we act. Between flu, COVID-19, and RSV, we are likely looking at a very large number of Americans getting sick, ending up in the hospital, and dying. Most of these Americans will be our most vulnerable: older Americans, the youngest children, and those with chronic diseases. And that number of 100,000 may be an underestimate, given that many of these infections go undetected and can substantially increase the risk of heart attacks or strokes weeks later. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] It doesn’t have to be this way. We can prevent another “tripledemic” and more—we can stop respiratory infections from harming and killing so many people. For the first time, this fall and winter, we have highly effective, safe vaccines available to protect Americans against all three major causes of serious respiratory infections. In addition to flu shots, which should work well this year (their efficacy can vary from year to year), we now have effective RSV vaccines for people 60 years of age or older. Substantial data now show that the updated COVID-19 vaccine is effective against the latest variants. But as the pandemic has shown many times, having tools—like vaccines and treatments&mda...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 freelance Source Type: news