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How to make travel safer after vacation, according to experts

2021-12-26T17:50:28.114Z


Amid the increase in cases in the US for the omicron variant, an expert recommends getting vaccinated or receiving the booster dose


Airlines cancel hundreds of flights before Christmas 3:43

(CNN) -

For Americans traveling after Christmas and New Years, getting their COVID-19 shots or booster doses as early as possible is critical to avoiding serious illness, a health expert told CNN on Saturday.

Amid a nationwide surge in cases driven by the omicron variant of the coronavirus ahead of the Christmas season, parts of the country are reporting an increase in hospitalizations and deaths.

And people should be prepared for an increased risk of infection while traveling by taking preventative measures, according to Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of Baylor College of Medicine's school of tropical medicine.

"If you've only received two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, even though it officially counts as fully vaccinated, we know its impact on advanced symptomatic disease is almost zero," Hotez told CNN's Amara Walker on Saturday.

The initial two-dose regimen will still protect "better against serious illnesses," he said, "but I think you still need a booster if you want to travel safely."

Booster shots can take two weeks to provide peak immunity, doctors have said, meaning the earlier you get the better.

Other steps, including wearing a quality mask, can help reduce the risk of infection.

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Millions of immunosuppressed Americans should delay future travel plans for a few weeks, if possible, in the hope that the current surge won't last as long as previous ones, Hotez said.

  • They offer economic incentives to get vaccinated against covid-19 in the face of an increase in infections in the United States.

And because of the infectivity of the omicron variants, "even if you are vaccinated with the booster, you still have to face the possibility that you could contract a symptomatic illness while passing through airports and going through Ubers," he said.

The United States has fully vaccinated nearly 62% of its total population, leaving millions of unvaccinated people at increased risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. USA And more than 31% of those inoculated have received additional doses or boosters.

Although early research indicates that omicron may cause less severe disease than the delta variant, the recently detected strain is highly contagious and threatens to deplete healthcare resources, officials and experts have warned.

A hallmark of the season has been the shortage of covid-19 test kits, a crucial tool in trying to mitigate the fast-moving virus.

Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said that while there is always a risk of contracting the virus while traveling, there are mitigation efforts available.

"So if someone has been exposed in your orbit or in your circle, or has been infected, you don't have to assume that everyone has it. Keep doing things like wearing masks around people or doing tests," Faust told Boris CNN's Sánchez this Saturday.

And for those on the go, Faust advises looking for "the weak links in the chain."

"It is not necessarily the plane itself. It could be the airport line in the bathroom where you have to be very careful with masks and other mitigation measures," he said.

"And I think depending on your threshold, you have to adjust accordingly."

Wave of contagions in Europe pulverizes all previous highs 2:05

Treatment options narrow for omicron

With millions of travelers, ómicron was also partially responsible for the Christmas weekend cancellations of about 1,700 flights in or out of the United States, according to aviation tracking website FlightAware.

Airlines, including Delta and United, said they are experiencing staff shortages due to omicron, which became the dominant strain in the United States last week when officials announced a new wave of measures to combat the spread.

And as for the fight against the omicron variant, there is currently a monoclonal antibody treatment that is still expected to be effective against the strain, the US Food and Drug Administration said in a statement Thursday.

  • FDA Authorizes First Oral Antiviral Treatment for COVID-19: Pfizer's Paxlovid

The treatment known as REGEN-VOC or the combined use of bamlanivimab and etesevimab is "unlikely" to "retain activity" against omicron, according to the statement.

That means that sotrovimab is the only monoclonal antibody treatment currently available to combat the omicron variant.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response has taken steps to halt assignments of other monoclonal antibody therapies and that an additional 300,000 doses of sotrovimab will be available in January, the agency said.

The United States also suffers from a shortage of Evusheld monoclonal antibody treatment, which will only be given to people who have compromised immune systems and do not have active COVID-19 infections.

Federal officials purchased up to 700,000 doses of the preventative drug, enough to help just one-tenth of the seven million people estimated to be eligible.

Delta Airlines passenger planes on the runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on December 24, 2021. Credit: YUKI IWAMURA / AFP via Getty Images

Minorities still have a higher risk of suffering the most serious results of covid-19

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, racial and ethnic minority communities have been the hardest hit by COVID-19, whether through illness, death, or economic struggles.

Almost two years later, some of those disparities persist.

Racial and ethnic minority groups who had other health conditions and contracted COVID-19 were more likely to have a higher hospital death rate than white patients, according to a study published Thursday in the JAMA Health Forum.

The study, which tracked data from more than 14 million hospitalizations in Medicare beneficiaries between January 2019 and February 2021, found a decrease in hospitalizations not related to COVID-19 and an increase in hospitalizations related to COVID-19 in all areas.

But "the average rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations for blacks and Hispanics exceeded that of white beneficiaries through February 2021," the researchers wrote.

  • Report reveals precarious situation of ethnic minorities in the face of covid-19

"Beneficiaries hospitalized with COVID-19 were more likely to belong to racial and ethnic minority groups relative to beneficiaries hospitalized prepandemic," they also noted.

The "persistently widening disparity" in non-COVID-19 mortality may be related to factors including differences in access to COVID-19 testing, access to care, and changes in case mix and quality of care. care related to pandemic factors, the authors wrote.

For COVID-19 hospitalizations, mortality was not "significantly different" for black patients compared to white patients, but mortality increased 3.5 percentage points in Hispanic patients.

The researchers suggested that a "spill-over effect," which increased COVID-19 hospitalizations, may have changed the distribution of hospital resources "potentially increasing racial and ethnic disparities in outcomes."

For hospitalizations not related to COVID-19, mortality in black patients increased almost 0.5 percentage points more than in white patients, "a 17.5% increase over the pre-pandemic death rate among black patients."

CNN's Virginia Langmaid and Elizabeth Cohen contributed to this report.

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Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-12-26

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