Demand For Vaccine Spikes As Omicron Variant Starts To Spread.
An increase in demand for the Covid-19 vaccine is evident as a new and largely unknown variant is detected in several states. (Washington Post)
“For most of October, fewer than or slightly over 1 million doses of coronavirus vaccines were reported to the CDC as being administered every day in the United States. By mid-November, those numbers hovered around 1.5 million on average. In the past three reporting days, they neared or exceeded 2 million.
Much is still unknown about omicron, against which some scientists and vaccine makers predict existing vaccines may not be as effective, but the new variant and “the idea that we have a virus that may evade two shots but that three shots are likely to be pretty protective, I think, has also gotten a lot of people much more focused on getting a booster,” says Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health”
The Coronavirus continues to mutate and spread with new variants coming every few months. Every new variant has the capacity to be so novel it can effectively get around the existing vaccines. We will not know if Omicron is able to to this but people are not waiting to find out and getting the jab sooner rather than later. Sadly, this could end up being a very long and deadly Winter if the current pace of community spread continues.
