During the Omicron Wave, Death Rates Soared for Older People - The New York Times - 0 views
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Last year, people 65 and older died from Covid at lower rates than in previous waves. But with Omicron and waning immunity, death rates rose again.
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Despite strong levels of vaccination among older people, Covid killed them at vastly higher rates during this winter’s Omicron wave than it did last year, preying on long delays since their last shots and the variant’s ability to skirt immune defenses.
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“This is not simply a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” said Andrew Stokes, an assistant professor in global health at Boston University who studies age patterns of Covid deaths. “There’s still exceptionally high risk among older adults, even those with primary vaccine series.”
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Covid deaths, though always concentrated in older people, have in 2022 skewed toward older people more than they did at any point since vaccines became widely available.
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That swing in the pandemic has intensified pressure on the Biden administration to protect older Americans, with health officials in recent weeks encouraging everyone 50 and older to get a second booster and introducing new models of distributing antiviral pills.
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But the mortality gap between older and younger people has grown: Middle-aged Americans, who suffered a large share of pandemic deaths last summer and fall, are now benefiting from new stores of immune protection in the population as Covid deaths once again cluster around older people.
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among people 65 and older, 13 percent are unvaccinated, 3 percent have a single Moderna or Pfizer shot and another 14 percent are vaccinated but not boosted.
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“The government wasn’t sure about the booster shot,” he said. “If they weren’t sure about it, and they’re the ones who put it out, why would I take it?” Mr. Thomas said Covid recently killed a former boss of his and hospitalized an older family friend.
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But scientists warned that many older Americans remained susceptible. To protect them, geriatricians called on nursing homes to organize in-home vaccinations or mandate additional shots.
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That changed last summer and fall, during the Delta surge. Older people were getting vaccinated more quickly than other groups: By November, the vaccination rate in Americans 65 and older was roughly 20 percentage points higher than that of those in their 40s. And critically, those older Americans had received vaccines relatively recently, leaving them with strong levels of residual protection.
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As a result, older people suffered from Covid at lower rates than they had been before vaccines became available. Among people 85 and older, the death rate last fall was roughly 75 percent lower than it had been in the winter of 2020, Dr. Stokes’s recent study found.
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The rebalancing of Covid deaths was so pronounced that, among Americans 80 and older, overall deaths returned to prepandemic levels in 2021, according to a study posted online in February.
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“In 2021, you see the mortality impact of the pandemic shift younger,” said Ridhi Kashyap, a lead author of that study and a demographer at the University of Oxford.
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For some people, even three vaccine doses appear to become less protective over time against Omicron-related hospital admissions.
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During the Omicron wave, Covid death rates were once again dramatically higher for older Americans than younger ones, Dr. Stokes said. Older people also made up an overwhelming share of the excess deaths — the difference between the number of people who actually died and the number who would have been expected to die if the pandemic had never happened.
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Long-ago Covid cases do not prevent future infections, but reinfected people are less likely to become seriously ill.
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Eventually, her family had to arrange a trip to a pharmacy on their own for a second booster.“It just seems that now the onus is put completely on the individual,” she said. “It’s not like it’s made easy for you.”