Nationally, new COVID cases averaged around 39,300 a day as of Tuesday, far lower than last winter but a vast undercount because of reduced testing and reporting.
Americans have been reluctant to get the updated boosters rolled out by Pfizer and rival Moderna, doses tweaked to target the BA.5 omicron strain that until recently was the most common type.
Pfizer said people 55 and older who got the omicron-targeting booster had four-fold higher antibody levels than those given an extra dose of the original vaccine.
Pfizer will charge $110 to $130 for a dose of its COVID-19 vaccine once the U.S. government stops buying the shots, but the drugmaker says it expects many people will continue receiving it for free.
When President Biden said over the weekend during an interview with 60 minutes, “The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it... but the pandemic is over,” it created some concern among health officials across the country, including Pima County.
The Food and Drug Administration has given its blessing to a new booster shot specifically targeting the BA-4 and BA-5 COVID variants which are the dominate strains in the United States and Arizona right now.
In its latest weekly assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.N. health agency said there were 5.3 million new cases and more than 14,000 deaths reported last week.
The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine is available in limited quantities at Pima County health clinics and mobile vaccination units, officials announced on Monday, Aug. 22.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have eased it’s COVID-19 restrictions following a dramatic drop in the number of cases, deaths and hospitalizations.
The nation’s top public health agency on Thursday relaxed its COVID-19 guidelines, dropping the recommendation that Americans quarantine themselves if they come into close contact with an infected person.
The Illinois-based company offered free COVID testing and had six independently owned sites in Arizona, including one off of Speedway Boulevard in Tucson.
Now that President Biden has shown that getting COVID-19 is not a death sentence for the elderly, the question seems to be when can I resume my normal life as the president has?
In a ruling earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Steven Logan concluded it was reasonable for the Biden administration to say that the money couldn’t be spent on efforts that would undermine compliance with COVID-19 prevention guidelines.
The new BA-5 variant of the coronavirus is now the predominate strain in Arizona with just under 60% of the new cases. But how many, is still uncertain.
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