Health

Seniors becoming less interested in getting COVID-19 vaccine boosters

By Mallika Marshall, MD

October 25, 2022 / 12:20 PM EDT / CBS Boston

BOSTON - Older Americans are most likely to have received the initial COVID-19 vaccines but their interest in boosters appears to be declining.

According to the CDC, about 71-percent of seniors received the first recommended booster, but only 44-percent received the second.

And a Kaiser Family Foundation survey published last month found only 8-percent of seniors said they had received the updated bivalent booster which became available in September, though almost half said they planned to.

Yet a significant number of seniors said they hadn't heard about the newest booster and didn't know it was recommended for them.

Americans over 65 are at the highest risk for COVID complications and therefore stand to gain the most benefit from boosters, so if you have not yet gotten yours, do it now.

Mallika Marshall, MD

Mallika Marshall, MD is an Emmy-award-winning journalist and physician who has served as the HealthWatch Reporter for CBS Boston/WBZ-TV for over 20 years. A practicing physician Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, Dr. Marshall serves on staff at Harvard Medical School and practices at Massachusetts General Hospital at the MGH Chelsea Urgent Care and the MGH Revere Health Center, where she is currently working on the frontlines caring for patients with COVID-19. She is also a host and contributing editor for Harvard Health Publications (HHP), the publishing division of Harvard Medical School.

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