Though the United States may be past the peak of its latest COVID-19 surge, federal health officials are eying ways to reduce the spread of the virus over colder months and the holiday season, including a relaunch of free COVID tests by mail.
The announcement comes as health providers gear up immunization activities ahead of the main respiratory virus season. Officials from federal agencies shared their outlooks for the upcoming season, along with the status on the tools to prevent them, at a media briefing today.
Free tests ahead of cooler weather, holiday travel
Dawn O'Connell, JD, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, said that, starting in September, people can order four free COVID tests to be delivered through the mail.
This is the seventh round of free tests since 2021, and the mail delivery program, combined with year-round access at outlets such as community clinics, has so far delivered nearly 1.8 million tests.
They do no good sitting in medicine cabinets.
She urged people to order the tests as families move indoors as the weather cools and as people prepare for travel and the holidays. O'Connell also urged people to use them. "They do no good sitting in medicine cabinets."
Winter virus projections
CDC Director Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH, said the CDC's forecasting for the fall and winter suggests similar or lower numbers of peak hospitalizations for all three of the main respiratory illnesses: COVID, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection.
She included a caveat, however, that assumptions could change, based on changes in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, which evolves faster than flu, and other factors.
Vaccine access and messaging
At today's briefing, health officials fielded questions about COVID vaccine access to lower-income and uninsured people, as well as regarding who should be vaccinated, especially given the current level of high activity.
The federal government's bridge access program, launched last September to provide broad COVID vaccine access to millions of uninsured Americans, has now ended due to budget recissions. But at today's briefing, Cohen announced that the CDC has identified $62 million in funding for state and local health departments to obtain the vaccine.
She also added that free access to the antiviral drug Paxlovid through an assistance program run by Pfizer is available until the end of 2024 and that both Pfizer and Merck have assistance programs for uninsured and underinsured people.
When asked about the timing of updated vaccines, for which approval came yesterday for the two mRNA vaccines, Peter Marks, MD, who directs the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said officials are always looking for concerning mutations and whether a vaccine update is urgently needed. However, he said the main consideration currently is getting doses into patient's arms, and that fall vaccination drives are the most realistic way to ensure that many people are vaccinated and boost their immunity to the virus.
The only way to get long COVID is having COVID.
Health officials said COVID is still more dangerous than flu, and Marks emphasized that the vaccine's impact against getting COVID is also a way to prevent long COVID. "The only way to get long COVID is having COVID," he said.
Wastewater levels still very high, but declining
For respiratory viruses as a whole, activity is still low, but wastewater levels for COVID are still at the very high level, the CDC said today in its latest data updates. Levels are still highest in the West, which continues to show a declining trend. The South and Midwest are also showing downward trends.
The latest data from WastwaterSCAN, a national wastewater monitoring system based at Stanford University in partnership with Emory University, shows that SARS-CoV-2 detections remain high in all regions, but with a downward trend over the past 3 weeks nationally and in the Northeast, South, and West.
Meanwhile, test positivity for COVID was at 18% nationally, the same as the previous week, with the highest levels in Texas and surrounding states. Emergency department visits for COVID were down a bit, and deaths remained level.
