Even before the COVID pandemic turned the world upside down, public health officials and health care providers would plead with the public every fall to get vaccinated in advance of the season of sniffles and coughs.
But now as the days get shorter, the weather gets cooler, and the respiratory virus season approaches, the stakes are even higher with COVID in the mix. Although the virus has become less deadly since it first started spreading in 2020, COVID was still responsible for nearly 7,000 deaths last year in the Golden State, more than 15 times the number of flu deaths in 2023, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.
Before the pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended everyone 6 months and older get the flu vaccine each year, with an emphasis on the very young and the elderly. Flu kills tens of thousands of people around the country each year, and has killed over 50,000 in a bad year.
Now the CDC recommends vaccinating for COVID as well as the flu for everyone 6 months and older. This is the second year that an annually updated COVID vaccine has been released in the fall, and health care providers are encouraging people to get both.
“There is a new variant of the virus that circulates every year,” said Paul Waldron, an infectious disease doctor with Kaiser Permanente in San Jose. “It has always been true for flu, and seems to be true for COVID as well,” he said. “Even if you’ve had the vaccine before, we recommend you do get both of them again.”
As preparations for the winter respiratory virus season begin, California is only just recovering from this summer’s stubborn COVID surge. Starting in May, positivity rates — the percent of COVID tests that come back positive — started to rise quickly, and then finally peaked in early August. Now the positivity rate has dropped from nearly 13% to under 11%, as of the state’s weekly data update on Friday.
Average daily COVID deaths, while much lower than early in the pandemic, started rising again in June and July, and reached just over 20 average daily deaths in the state by early August, just months after reaching a record-low as the state logged its first day with no COVID deaths in April of 2024.
Last winter’s COVID surge brought the daily average deaths to around 30 at its peak, dwarfing the average daily deaths of over 600 in January of 2021.
In anticipation of the upcoming season of sniffles, Kaiser Permanente, other health care providers, and pharmacies around the country have been promoting the vaccines now that both annual formulations are available.
Kaiser patients can now walk in without an appointment to any vaccination clinic in Northern California to get their flu and COVID vaccines. According to the state’s health department, most insurance plans cover COVID-19 vaccines, but check with your health care provider or local pharmacy for more information.
Vaccination rates for COVID when the vaccines were first released in California were high, but as the virus has become less lethal, fewer people are getting the updated vaccines. While higher vaccination rates mean fewer hospitalizations across the board, doctors and health care providers are the most concerned about older patients and those who are immunocompromised.
“What the vaccines really excel at … is reducing how bad the infections get,” Dr. Waldron said. “It will prevent you, especially if you’re at risk, from having to go to the hospital.”
