Should you wait for the Omicron booster?

News of the pandemic and Covid-19 cases have dropped off the front pages and largely out of the news for most of the last several months. You would think that the pandemic has passed and that not very many people are getting sick or dying.

However, if you look at the daily death rate from Covid in August, you’ll see that Covid deaths greatly outnumber deaths from automobile accidents and guns. 

You can quickly see the Covid case counts in your area by clicking on the Layers icon in Google maps and  selecting “Covid-19 Info”. Here’s the map for the New York City and New Jersey area, showing several counties in red that have high case counts (this feature is not available for Canada).

Google map with Covid-19 cases

However, case counts are no longer a very reliable statistic for understanding the exposure risk in your area because Covid testing is not as widespread as it was in the beginning of the pandemic. One of the best indicators to see the extent of Covid is the number of hospitalizations.

Daily Covid-19 Hospital Occupancy in Ontario

The above chart shows the basis for the declaration on August 5th that Ontario’s 7th wave of COVID-19 peaked.

So you still need to be careful about getting infected with Covid, especially if you are elderly or have any health issues. The best protection is still from a Covid-19 vaccine. But vaccines generally wain after 5 months, so if you are approaching that time since your last vaccination or booster, you should be considering getting another shot.

Quebec announced that it will be providing 5th doses of Covid vaccines in August.

However all existing Covid vaccines were developed to combat the original virus. That virus has not been in circulation for a long time. Currently almost all cases in Canada and the US are Omicron variants. Pfizer and Moderna have developed a new vaccine that specifically targets the Omicron variant. This vaccine will be a lot more effective than the current vaccines.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8959603/moderna-seeks-approval-canada-bivalent-boosterd-booster/

However it is not clear when this vaccine will actually be available. So should you proceed with a 4th or 5th dose of the current vaccine or wait for the new one?

The following article suggests that you should get a 4th or 5th shot if you have not received a vaccine or recovered from a Covid infection in the past six months, because your immunity has probably waned.

However, if you have received a booster shot in the past and are under 50 without any underlying health conditions or have recovered from a Covid infection you can wait for the Omicron-specific booster.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/covid-omicron-booster.html