As California sees COVID uptick, here’s what to know

A panel of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experts met Tuesday to discuss the new COVID-19 vaccines and voted in favor of recommending them for everyone 6 months and older. The meeting came one day after the Food and Drug Administration greenlit the boosters. The new vaccines are expected to become available soon. 

The news comes as COVID-19 cases are on the rise once again in California.

The seven-day average positivity rate (the percentage of all tests in the state coming back positive for COVID) was nearing 14% as of Sept. 8, according to the California Department of Public Health. It was 4% at the start of June.  

The new vaccines will be targeted at protecting individuals from XBB.1.5, an Omicron subvariant that is currently circulating. Other strains this season include XBB.1.16 and EG.5, sometimes called Eris, which is leading the pack in California. The World Health Organization has classified EG.5 as a “variant of interest” due to its growing prevalence, but called its public health risk “low.” 

The experts SFGATE spoke to are confident that the new shot will offer protection from severe illness even though it does not target EG.5 specifically. 

“Luckily, the EG.5 subvariant carries just one additional mutation compared to the XBB.1.5 subvariant … so the two subvariants are very similar,” Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases doctor and author of the book “Endemic: A Post-Pandemic Playbook,” wrote in an email to SFGATE. 

“Given that the XBB variants are still dominant and there has been only minor changes from one XBB to the next, the vaccine should work well, particularly against serious disease, hospitalization and death,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at UCSF.

Pharmacies and health care providers will be offering the new Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. Kaiser says on its website that it expects to have supply in early October. Walgreens and CVS said they will start taking appointments as soon as supply arrives. Bay Area residents can check in with their local public health departments for more information on where to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated.

The new strains are generally more transmissible than prior ones, which led to COVID rates rising at the end of summer, as reflected in wastewater data collected by several counties across California. In years past, high amounts of virus meant dramatic increases in hospitalizations and deaths, but the recent uptick in cases has not brought a concurrent surge in severe illness. 

Chin-Hong said he’s not surprised about the uptick in cases as fall approaches. “There is waning immunity from the last time most people got infected earlier in the year or the last time folks received a vaccine,” he wrote in an email to SFGATE. “Heat waves have also driven people indoors and travel, gatherings, concerts are back with a vengeance (the ‘Taylor Swift’ effect).”

The good news is that while COVID may seem to be everywhere, people getting infected with the virus are experiencing less severe illness than they did in the past, in part due to increased immunity from prior infections and vaccines. The new booster should also offer protection against severe infection.

Hospitalizations are rising slightly in California, but they aren’t as high as they were at this time last year. In San Francisco, there were 16 COVID-related deaths reported June through July as of Sept. 12; in the same time frame last summer, there were 80, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

“The COVID hospitalizations and deaths are much lower than in previous surges, so this should give Americans reassurance that immunity, vaccines and therapeutics work,” Gandhi wrote.

While some people may opt to put a mask back to avoid getting the virus, experts told SFGATE that they don’t expect mandates to come back.

“My sense is we’re not ever going to be back to lockdowns or mask mandates, nor do I think that’s needed,” Dr. Dean Winslow, a professor of medicine at Stanford, told SFGATE over the phone. “I’m still personally being careful about crowded indoor environments. Just a week ago, I wore a mask on flights between the Bay Area and the East Coast, also the airport terminal.”

Chin-Hong said that he carries a mask in his pocket these days in case he needs to enter an indoor crowded setting. 

“We can think of wearing a mask for two reasons: to lower the risk of getting seriously ill (for ourselves if older or very immunocompromised, or if you live with someone like that) or to minimize infection (which can still be very disruptive in 2023 given isolation needed),” Chin-Hong wrote. “There is also a non-zero risk of long COVID although that risk can be attenuated by vaccines and/or Paxlovid use for early infection.”

Gandhi said that while a mask is helpful if you want to avoid COVID altogether, she does not recommend them and believes in the power of the COVID-19 vaccines.

“A large systematic review of mask studies conducted before and during COVID-19 does not support the further use of mask mandates on the public,” Gandhi wrote. “Although that may seem counterintuitive, this is likely because people wear different kinds of masks and wear them in different ways (e.g. below the nose).”

If you do opt to wear a mask, Gandhi said research shows that well-fitted masks — like N95, KN95, KF94, FFP2 masks, etc. — offer protection for the person wearing it. 

If you’re going to see your older aunt whom you want to avoid getting sick at all costs, Gandhi recommends meeting at a well-ventilated location. “The most effective non-pharmaceutical intervention seems to be ventilation,” she wrote.