This Week’s Highlights:

Volume Eighteen: Air Date 1.31.22. “Travel and Booster Mandates”

Know anyone who is still on the fence about getting a booster, and wants to travel? This Mandate Minute could be a good wake up call for them. US cities, and some foreign countries ,are starting to require that travelers be boosted to meet the definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ – at least if they want to do any of the fun tourist-y activities that drew them to the locale in the first place. Here’s a few examples.

· Hawaii: In Maui County, there are already strict vaccination requirements to enter gyms, restaurants, and entertainment venues. This will be expanded to include booster shots, and soon, Hawaii is expected to become the first to have a statewide booster mandate.

· The San Francisco Health Department has mandated that, effectively, people must be boosted to attend any indoor gatherings, as well as outdoor events like concerts, festivals, conferences, and live shows.

· Travelers to Croatia must be either fully vaccinated with an approved vaccine administered within the past year, with the final dose taken more than 14 days before arrival, or else meet certain other requirements like quarantining, COVID testing, or providing proof of recovery from COVID.

· To enter Israel, you must have proof of full vaccination or recovery from COVID-19, unless you have a special permit or Israeli passport.

· In most places, being boosted is still insufficient for entry. Most countries, including the U.S., require proof of a negative COVID-19 test in order to enter, even if you’re vaccinated.

If you do meet the booster mandate requirements, there are a variety of apps that you can use to scan and store your records. One mentioned in this article is Clear’s Health Pass; the authors also stress that you should check to see if your destination requires the use of a specific app to gain entry to various establishments. I read in the New York Times over the weekend that many people are going back to the old days of working with a travel agent, who can be enlisted to do all the COVID vaccination mandate research and be up to date on what individual localities require.

While the list of cities and countries that mandate boosters right now is short, it is expected to grow, and grow quickly. So, if any fence-sitters you know want or plan to travel, tell them that the time is now to get boosted.

Volume Nineteen: Air Date 2.2.22. “Subvariant BA.2”

You may have heard about the omicron subvariant known as BA.2 and may be getting questions about vaccinations and this variant. Emerging research, especially from Denmark where this variant now accounts for 82% of COVID cases, suggests that this variant is 1.5 times more transmissible than the highly transmissible original omicron strain. However, it does not appear to cause more severe illness. Most importantly to this conversation – those whose vaccinations are up to date are still well-protected against hospitalization and death.

“This (new variant) may mean higher peak infections in places that have yet to peak, and a slowdown in the downward trends in places that have already experienced peak omicron,” said Dr. Thomas Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London.

Currently about 8% of US COVID-19 cases are BA.2. A critical question is whether people who were infected in the BA.1 (original omicron variant) wave will be protected from BA.2. That has been a concern in Denmark, where some places that saw high case counts of BA.1 infections were reporting rising cases of BA.2 If prior BA.1 infection does not protect against BA.2, “this could be sort of a two-humped camel kind of wave,” said Dr. Egon Ozer an infectious disease expert at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “It’s too early to know if that will happen.”

In addition to BA.1 and BA.2, the World Health Organization lists two other subvariants under the Omicron umbrella: BA.1.1.529 and BA.3. All are closely related genetically, but each features mutations that could alter how they behave. Fortunately, being vaccinated and boosted provides good protection against the worst effects of these variants.