While the chance of a heated political discussion at your Thanksgiving table might be extra high this year, the chance of getting COVID at your family gathering is lower than it has been in the past several years.
That’s even with millions of Californians expected to travel for the holiday.
“The bottom line is that we’re in a very, very good place at this moment,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley.
Going into the fifth year of post-COVID Thanksgiving festivities, levels of the virus are low statewide, and around most of the country. Santa Clara County’s wastewater testing, which measures levels of the virus in local sewer sheds, shows the virus at low levels across the county.
Data from California’s public health department shows “RSV and influenza activity are low but increasing” and “COVID-19 is currently low in California,” according to data through November 16.
As of this fall, California public health officials publish data on COVID, along with flu and RSV, in weekly respiratory virus updates. The update from the week before Thanksgiving shows the test positivity rates for influenza and RSV have started to rise, while COVID test positivity, hospitalizations and deaths remain low.
“We went through a really late summer wave, and that really got a lot of Americans immunized,” Swartzberg noted, as a possible explanation for why COVID has yet to start surging this winter, typically a season when rates are high. In past winters, COVID started to surge in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.
While rates are low now, the threat of COVID has hardly disappeared. While the risk has diminished, it still takes a devastating toll, killing Californians every day. Since June 30 of this year, the beginning of the respiratory virus season, 1,691 Californians have died from COVID. In the same time, 49 have died from influenza, and another 10 have died from RSV.
And while COVID was once seen as less of a threat to young children than other respiratory illnesses, it has accounted for three pediatric deaths so far this season. Meanwhile, one pediatric death has been attributed to flu in the first four and a half months since the respiratory virus season began.
The continued deadly threat of the virus is why public health officials continue to prioritize vaccination, especially for the most vulnerable, those most likely to have a bad outcome.
But given rising skepticism around the COVID vaccine, many public health agencies are taking a different approach to encouraging people to get a shot. And those new approaches might be working this year, with vaccination rates up around the country compared to the same time the year before. But there is lots of progress to be made, said Swartzberg, adding that annual flu vaccine uptake is still much higher than for the COVID vaccine.
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“Americans have it sort of backwards” Swartzberg said. “There are many more [Americans] immunized against influenza than COVID, yet COVID is a much more serious disease.”
As of this week, 18% of eligible people in Santa Clara County had received an updated COVID vaccine, about twice the statewide vaccination rate of 9.6%. But 30% of eligible residents in the county have received a flu vaccine this year.
”Even though our rates are low, we are still doing better than last year,” Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County health officer, said last week, during a panel hosted by the Big Cities Health Coalition, adding that she and her agency are still looking for new strategies to encourage vaccination. “Our strategies are changing away from telling and more to listening and understanding,” she said.