Covid booster shots are not yet available to the general public. The CDC has limited their availability, at least for now.
The head of the Washington State Hospital Association is urging people who don’t think they’re eligible yet to check, just in case.With cold weather here and the holiday season coming, people are spending more time inside together. Last year, that led to big surges in the number of people infected by Covid. Who knows what it will bring this year?
Cassie Sauer from the Washington State Hospital Association says, the more people who get vaccinated, the less chance of a surge. The risks are lessening with millions of previously-vaccinated people receiving their booster shots and more children now being immunized. She’s urging people who want a third shot but are following federal guidelines to do some more checking.
"The eligibility for boosters may be wider than what you have heard if you’ve heard underlying medical conditions and thought it was like organ transplant or cancer," she said.
She says there’s a big variety of illnesses in the underlying conditions list, including many common chronic health problems.
“Especially if you think about overweight and asthma and diabetes and mental health/substance abuse or smoking. That covers a whole lot of our population, I think," she said.
Sauer says if many of those people are able to get booster shots now, it might help to reduce the overall societal risk of another winter surge.