It’s spring, the season for sweet strawberries, colorful tulips, crisp vegetables, and a COVID-19 booster shot. Health experts with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently recommended an extra dose of the 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine for all people in the U.S. ages 65 and older.
Doctor Giving Vaccination to Senior Woman
Why? Simple. Hospitalizations and COVID-19 death rates for people who are 65 and older have been significantly higher than COVID deaths and hospitalizations among younger people over the last several months, and vaccine effectiveness is waning over time.
Health experts want to give extra protection to older people, so a committee of medical advisers to the CDC in February recommended a spring COVID-19 booster shot for everyone who is 65 and older. In addition, people who are immunocompromised also have been eligible for extra doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, said Dr. Michelle Barron, who is also a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus.
At this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, older adults are having a tougher time when they get a bad case of COVID-19. That’s not surprising because immune systems in older people aren’t as strong as they are in the young, aside from younger people who are immunocompromised.
Here are some reasons why medical advisors to the CDC recommended a spring COVID-19 booster shot. More than half of people who had to be hospitalized for COVID-19 between October and December of 2023 were older than age 65, according to CDC researchers.
As people get older, the risk of dying from COVID-19 continues to rise. People ages 75 and older were much more likely to die if they contracted COVID-19 than people who were sick with COVID-19 and were 65 to 74 years old.
Fewer people of all ages have been getting the newest COVID-19 vaccines. Among people of all ages, only about 22% of U.S. adults have gotten the 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine, which was reformulated last year to better protect against the newest variants. Older adults have been more likely to get the newest vaccine, with about 43% of people ages 75 and older having received the newest shot, according to CDC data.
Vaccine effectiveness wanes over time, so especially for vulnerable people, it’s great to give the immune system a boost in combating COVID-19 infections. “You’ll want to wait at least four months since the last time you had a COVID-19 vaccine,” Barron said. if you’ve recently gotten sick with COVID-19, you should wait about three months.
Don’t wait for the fall vaccine. Unless you’ve recently been sick with COVID-19, you should not wait to get a spring booster dose. If you are 65 or older, or you are immunocompromised, you should go ahead and get a booster of the 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine now.
Anyone who gets a booster this spring will also be eligible to get a dose of the newest COVID-19 vaccine this fall. If you’re sick, stay home. If you have symptoms of an illness, don’t expose others, especially vulnerable people.
Barron’s bottom-line advice to her older patients and relatives is quite simple: get your spring booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. And, no matter your age, if you never got a 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine, you can still get vaccinated.
And even though vaccine effectiveness wanes over time, Barron said it’s still tremendously helpful to get COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots because they significantly reduce deaths and hospitalizations. Courtesy of UCHealth.