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Booster

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Photo from Deposit Photos

Now available at a doctor’s office or pharmacy near you: the latest COVID-19 booster.

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration gave Pfizer and Moderna Emergency Use Authorization to start distributing their newest COVID booster, which includes protection against the highly infectious Ba.4 and Ba.5 strains of omicron.

A few days later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the administration of the booster.

Area doctors welcomed the news and suggested the newest booster would be helpful for certain groups.

“I suspect that, at a minimum, those who needed to get a fourth booster (elderly, comorbidity, immune issues) should get” it, explained Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, in an email. “I believe that its approval will include all individuals over age 12.”

Dr. Adrian Popp, chair of Infection Control at Huntington Hospital/ Northwell Health, agreed that senior citizens and immunocompromised people should consider the latest booster.

With other shots available until now, residents may need to consider how much time to wait between boosters.

People are eligible for another booster two months after a previous COVID vaccine, according to the FDA website.

The FDA authorized single doses of Moderna’s booster for people 18 and over and Pfizer’s booster for those 12 and older.

The incidence of hospitalizations among people who have COVID at area hospitals has remained fairly stable during the summer. Stony Brook University Hospital has about 50 COVID inpatients each day, while Huntington Hospital has about 11.

Doctors cautioned, however, that those numbers include people who are hospitalized for other procedures or treatments and who test positive as a part of the hospital’s effort to monitor the pandemic.

“The vaccines, to a large extent (primary series plus a booster-protection) are working quite well” at preventing the need for hospitalizations, Nachman wrote.

Doctors urged people to take steps to protect themselves, their families, and their communities against contracting the virus.

“With the virus changing, it’s even more important to keep yourself and your family safe from getting COVID again and remain vigilant about taking precautions, i.e. hand washing, social distancing, mask wearing,” Nachman added.

A minority of residents treated with Pfizer’s antiviral therapy Paxlovid have experienced a rebound, testing positive days or even a week or more after receiving the antiviral treatment.

“Viral rebound occurs in about 10%” for those who have taken Paxlovid, with the majority in the older age groups, Nachman wrote. Having said that, the rebound we are seeing has not led to Emergency Department visits or hospitalizations.” 

As for mental health issues, residents of Suffolk County, as with other communities, have generally seen an improvement amid a relaxation of restrictions that limited social contact and kept people from their routines.

“Mental health issues were mostly related to the isolation mandates that were required to slow the spread of COVID,” Popp explained. “The reduction in restrictions has improved the mental health issues for many people.”

Monkeypox vigilance

Area hospitals continue to remain on the lookout for potential outbreaks of monkeypox.

“We are aggressively evaluating all suspected cases of monkeypox and have protocols in place for testing as well as treatment,” Nachman wrote. “We will be rolling out a [National institutes of Health] funded clinical trial for treating individuals across the ages with TPOXX.”

Huntington Hospital has had two confirmed cases of monkeypox. Popp expects the virus will “likely continue to spread.”

Several medical facilities continue to administer the limited monkeypox vaccines.

SBUH is working with the Suffolk County Department of Health to provide vaccinations at the Edie Windsor Healthcare Center in Hampton Bays.

On the official Suffolk County website, eligible residents can schedule monkeypox vaccinations through Northwell Health at the Bayshore Mall on Sunrise Highway.

As for the flu, Nachman urged residents to get their vaccines prior to the start of the seasonal flu season, sometime between now and November.

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Photo from Town of Smithtown
Photo from Town of Smithtown
Photo from Town of Smithtown
Photo from Town of Smithtown
Photo from Town of Smithtown
Photo from Town of Smithtown

The Town of Smithtown, in partnership with Kings Park Central School District and Rite Aid, successfully hosted the second and final round of COVID-19 Booster vaccines for 160 school employees and residents ages 50 and up, over the weekend. On Saturday, May 15, a temporary COVID-19 Vaccine Site was implemented at Kings Park High School. Rite Aid facilitated and administered 160 Moderna vaccines to those individuals who previously received their first dose, four weeks prior.

Kings Park Fire Department was on standby protocol in the event of an adverse reaction. Six KPHS National Honor Society students volunteered to assist with logistics and registration during the event, alongside staff from the Smithtown Senior Center and Supervisor Wehrheim’s Office.

“The entire event was smooth sailing thanks to an incredible partnership with Kings Park School District and Rite Aid. I am especially grateful to the team at our Smithtown Senior Center, as well as some incredible high school students, all who volunteered their Saturdays to serve the people of our community,” said Supervisor Ed Wehrheim.

Approximately 160 Moderna vaccines were supplied and administered to Smithtown residents and surrounding school district employees courtesy of Rite Aid Pharmacy. Vaccines were administered by healthcare professionals from Rite Aid. Residents were then monitored during the required 20 minute observation period. The average appointment took a total of 30 minutes, with the bulk of time going towards monitoring. The Moderna booster vaccines were administered exactly four weeks from the date of each first vaccine appointment, held on Saturday, April 17th..

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Dr. Shetal Shah gives Assemblyman Steve Englebright a shot at the press conference announcing that the Neonatal Infant Pertussis Act was signed into law in 2012. Photo from Maria Hoffman

A young state law is already breathing new life into the number of newborns burdened with whooping cough.

It has been three years since state Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket) saw his Neonatal Infant Pertussis Act signed into law, and last week, members of the Pediatric Academic Societies said it’s already paying off, by reducing infections 50 percent. Both Englebright and Dr. Shetal Shah, who worked alongside the lawmaker in 2012 as a member of the neonatal intensive care unit at Stony Brook University, heralded the legislation as an effective measure to keep newborns healthy across New York State.

Englebright wrote the NPPA with Shah’s help, requiring Tdap, a vaccine against whooping cough, be offered to parents and caregivers in contact with a newborn during birth hospitalization as a way to promote “cocoon” immunity for the infant, according to Shah. Five months later the legislation was signed into law by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), codifying Shah’s common sense idea into law.

“That year, the New York Department of Health had already reported a three-fold increase in whooping cough since the previous year,” Englebright said. “It is gratifying to learn that this law is working and that children are being protected from whooping cough.”

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, starts with “cold-like” symptoms such as fever, sneezing or a runny nose.  It may then morph into a mild cough, which becomes more severe in the first or second week.

The NPPA fight started in 2012 when Shah reached out to Englebright’s office with an idea that he said could prevent whooping cough in newborns. In a statement, Shah said newborns are typically the most at risk of serious illness or death if infected. But with help from Englebright’s legislation, vaccinations have been effective in combatting the infection for newborns.

Using the New York Communicable Disease Electronic Surveillance System, Heather L. Brumberg from Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital and her colleagues obtained data from 2010 to 2015 on pertussis cases and hospitalizations for 57 New York counties outside of the city. In addition, they used state population rates in 2011 and 2013 to determine the incidence per 100,000.

During the study period, 6,086 cases of pertussis were detected, 68.8 percent of which occurred before the law passed and 31.2 percent of which occurred after. Overall, the pertussis incidence rate decreased from 37.3 per 100,000 children before the law to 16.9 per 100,000 after.

For children aged younger than 1 year old, pertussis incidence decreased from 304 per 100,000 children to 165 per 100,000 and pertussis hospitalization decreased from 104 per 100,000 children to 63 per 100,000 children. The NPPA was associated with these reductions, especially for those at high-risk, the researchers wrote.

“The data shows that passage of the Neonatal Infant Pertussis Act [NPPA] was associated with a reduced incidence of disease in children in each age group studied,” said Shah, who now works at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital of the Westchester Medical Center Health Network. “This is associative, as we were unable to track actual parental and caregiver Tdap immunization rates.”

Whooping cough vaccine is a five-shot series that is recommended for children at 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, 15 to 18 months, and again at 4 to 6 years of age.

The pertussis vaccine is short-lived and can wear off within a decade, so some people who were immunized as children are no longer protected in adolescence or adulthood unless they get another booster shot.

“This should provide some degree of scientific impetus to other states and counties to consider this measure as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce whooping cough,” Shah said.

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