Health

(NEW YORK) — The rush to vaccinate children against COVID-19 is accelerating amid a steady increase in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations nationwide.

Last week, nearly 142,000 child coronavirus cases were recorded, with weekly infections among children up by more than 40% since late October, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA).

Nationally, new coronavirus cases among all age groups have been increasing for the last three weeks, with the average now topping 92,000 new cases a day. Thirty-one states, as well as Washington, D.C., have seen an uptick in daily cases of 10% or more in the past two weeks.

Last week, children accounted for about a quarter of reported weekly COVID-19 cases, despite individuals under age 18 only making up 22.2% of the U.S. population. Regionally, the Midwest continues to see the highest number of pediatric cases, as the area experiences a notable viral resurgence with winter arriving across the region.

The nation has also seen an uptick in pediatric hospital admissions, alongside other age groups. Although hospitalization totals are still significantly lower than during the nation’s most recent summer surge, across the country, just under 1,250 children are hospitalized with a confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infection. Ohio currently leads the country with 168 children receiving care, followed by Texas with 120 children.

Amid this viral resurgence, health experts are urging parents to get their eligible children vaccinated.

COVID-19 “is one of the top 10 leading causes of death in children,” Dr. Leana Wen, emergency physician and professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, said during a briefing Wednesday with the National Press Foundation. Vaccines are a “safe and simple intervention,” she said, and significantly lower the risk of severe illness.

Earlier this month, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky reported the agency had seen a surge of interest in pediatric COVID-19 vaccinations, following emergency use authorization of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

“We’re seeing strong demand for COVID vaccinations among children ages 5 to 11 across the country with hundreds of thousands of appointments booked for the next few weeks,” Walensky said at the time.

Approximately one-third of children ages 5-17 have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, according to recently updated federal data. In the last two weeks alone, 2 million children ages 5-11 years-old have received their first dose.

If parents get their children vaccinated now, they will be able to be fully vaccinated by the later winter holidays, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

“We now have vaccines that are highly effective and clearly very safe, particularly now with the recent data showing that we can vaccinate children from 5 through 11,” Fauci said. “There are 28 million children within that age category. If we started vaccinating them now, they’ll be fully protected by Christmas.”

Although severe illness due to COVID-19 remains “uncommon” among children, the two organizations wrote, there is an “urgent” need to collect more data on the long-term consequences of the pandemic on children, “including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects.”

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(NEW YORK) — COVID-19 booster shots are now authorized for anyone over the age of 18. For anyone hoping to get a COVID-19 booster dose before the Thanksgiving holiday, experts say it’s important to understand that protection doesn’t kick in right away.

Although the body starts to increase antibodies within a few days after the shot, it takes two weeks for peak protection to return.

“There is a meaningful increase in antibody titers by one week and peak responses at 2 weeks following mRNA boosting,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

More than 32 million people in the U.S. have already received a COVID-19 booster dose. The FDA and CDC say it’s safe to mix and match boosters.

COVID-19 booster shots are composed of the same formulation as the current COVID-19 vaccines. But the Moderna vaccine booster is given at half the dose of the primary Moderna series.

Studies show the immunity gained from the primary vaccine series may decline over time — particularly protection against mild breakthrough infections. Therefore, experts recommend booster vaccination to increase immunity.

“The booster shot will have a similar response as the second dose of the primary series. The highest antibody level will be around 10-14 days and then things will level off. The antibody levels will decline as it would with all vaccines, however the boosters help to stabilize the antibody levels,” said Dr. Simone Wildes, an infectious disease specialist at South Shore Health in Massachusetts.

Public health experts say booster shots could also help slow the spread of COVID-19 within communities. However, to truly curb the pandemic, it’s far more important for the unvaccinated to get their initial doses.

The expanded authorization of the Moderna and Pfizer boosters comes right in time for the holidays to allow many more Americans to get their booster shots before the holidays for safer travels and gatherings. The expanded authorization to now everyone over the age of 18 also helps eliminate any confusion on who may receive booster shots and ensures boosters are available to everyone who needs one.

Esra Demirel, MD is an OB-GYN resident physician at Northwell Health-North Shore University Hospital & LIJ Medical Center and is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.

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(WASHINGTON) — Every vaccinated person should “get boosted” depending on how long it’s been since their initial shots, but those with their original vaccination protection are still considered “fully vaccinated” despite indications that immunity can wane, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday.

The White House chief medical adviser appeared on ABC’s This Week on Sunday to discuss the recent announcement made by the CDC on Friday to officially recommend booster shots for all adults ages 18 years and older. This move comes after many states were already allowing all adults to get a booster against COVID-19.

“Now that you look at the data as it’s evolved in the United States, it’s very clear,” Fauci told This Week co-anchor Martha Raddatz. “They wanted to make sure that the safety signals were right, and once that became very clear, right now I’m very pleased that we’re in a situation where there’s no confusion, there’s no lack of clarity.”

Following recent statements from governors of Connecticut and New Mexico — who have said they do not consider an individual fully vaccinated unless they have received a booster due to the drop one can see in immunity — Raddatz pressed Fauci on why the White House has not adopted that standard.

By definition, Fauci said, fully vaccinated right now means someone has received two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

“We’ll continue to follow the data, because right now when we’re boosting people, what we’re doing is following them,” Fauci said. “We’re going to see what the durability of that protection is, and as we always do, you just follow and let the data guide your policy and let the data guide your recommendations.”

As of Friday, 59% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said last week there’s a high chance that boosters will be needed annually, but when asked by Raddatz what he thought, Fauci did not necessarily agree.

“We would hope — and this is something that we’re looking at very carefully — that third shot with the mRNA not only boosts you way up but increases the durability so that you will not necessarily need it every six months or a year,” Fauci said. “If it doesn’t, and the data show we do need it more often, then we’ll do it, but you want to make sure you get the population optimally protected and you do whatever you need to do to make sure you do that.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that COVID-19 deaths in 2021 surpassed the number of COVID-19 deaths in 2020, with the total number of deaths now reaching more than 770,000. Raddatz pressed Fauci to explain how deaths increased, and he cited the delta variant — “which is very, very different from the original variants that we were dealing with before.”

“This is a virus that is highly transmissible,” he said. “The more people that get infected, the more people are going to get hospitalized. The more people they get hospitalized, the more people are going to die.”

Fauci noted that another difference between this year and last year is the availability of vaccines, and he stressed the importance of getting vaccinated.

“We now have vaccines that are highly effective and clearly very safe, particularly now with the recent data showing that we can vaccinate children from 5 through 11,” Fauci said. “There are 28 million children within that age category. If we started vaccinating them now, they’ll be fully protected by Christmas.”

With the holidays coming up, Raddatz also asked Fauci to explain what safety precautions families can take this holiday season.

“If you’re vaccinated — and hopefully, you’ll be boosted, too — and your family is, you can enjoy a typical Thanksgiving meal or Thanksgiving holiday with your family,” Fauci said. “The thing we are concerned about is the people who are not vaccinated, because what they’re doing is, they’re the major source of the dynamics of the infection in the community. And the higher the level of dynamics of infection, the more everyone is at risk.”

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(NEW YORK) — While Thanksgiving will be a time to gather again this year for many people, thanks to COVID-19 vaccines, it may for other people be the start of a difficult holiday season.

Some people may be home alone on Thanksgiving by choice, following safety guidelines, while other families will be missing loved ones at the Thanksgiving table who are hospitalized with COVID-19 or who have passed away from the virus over the past nearly two years.

Still others may be coping with a non-COVID related illness that is keeping their family separated or coping with a deployment or a divorce, separation or estrangement that unfolded during the pandemic.

“What many people are going to experience this year, for a variety of reasons, is that their holiday table is not going to be as full as it normally is,” said Kory Floyd, Ph.D., an author and professor of interpersonal communication at the University of Arizona. “Many American households are going to experience a sense of deprivation this year.”

“Especially on a holiday, when it’s a time to celebrate and be around loved ones, that accentuates a sense of loneliness,” he said.

Here are five tips to make Thanksgiving a joy-filled day regardless of who you are, or are not, spending it with.

1. Make a plan:

Planning ahead the fun things you’ll do on Thanksgiving, or the new traditions you’ll start, can both help ease the stress and uncertainty of the day and help you from obsessing over what could have been, according to Floyd.

“Think now of things you’ll plan for that day that will be positive distractions,” he said. “The benefit of [planning ahead] is we’re ready and we’re prepared, and we’re prepared to enjoy and find meaning and find joyfulness in whatever we do with that time.”

Planning ahead can be as detailed as what time you’ll eat meals and do activities to a more general list of the movies you want to watch or the activities you can do outside in fresh air, experts say.

Floyd recommends planning something that feels indulgent on what is still a special day of the year.

“What feels indulgent to people will vary from person to person,” he said, giving examples of a bubble bath or a decadent dessert. “But make it something that goes beyond the ordinary and feels really special and allow yourself the freedom to enjoy it, to lean into it.”

2. Find ways to help other people:

Doing something good for someone else can take the focus off yourself and help ease feelings of loneliness or discontent, according to Nicole Beurkens, Ph.D., a holistic child psychologist and the founder and director of Horizons Developmental Resource Center in Caledonia, Michigan.

That could mean dropping items off at a nursing home, preparing boxed meals for neighbors or delivering books and needed items to women’s and children’s centers, recommends Beurkens.

“Sometimes the best way to soothe ourselves is to do something outside of ourselves,” she said.

3. Phone a friend or loved one:

Even if you can’t physically be with your loved ones on Thanksgiving, it’s important to find ways to stay in touch with people, recommend both Floyd and Beurkens.

Plan ahead to make sure you can call, Skype or Zoom with friends and relatives on Thanksgiving, whether it’s just talking to catch up or taking part in holiday traditions together via technology. If the technology is too much, spend the down time you may have that day writing letters to family and friends or simply thinking about who in your life you’re grateful for, according to the experts.

4. Think ahead to next year:

While it’s normally important to stay in the moment and not look ahead or behind, experts say this year it can be healthy to look ahead to a more hopeful time.

“It gives a sense of forward-looking motion that helps people not feel as heavy a sense of what is going on now,” said Floyd. “It reminds people that this is temporary and things will get better.”

Floyd said he is reminding his patients that no matter how bad this year feels, it is temporary, and it is okay to start thinking ahead to things like travel and gathering again in-person with family and friends.

His advice is to be specific when thinking about the future, picturing things like exactly where you want to travel to, who you will spend Thanksgiving with next year and what new traditions you may want to start.

5. Be okay with shedding some tears:

Both Floyd and Beurkens say it’s okay and perfectly normal to spend a few moments on Thanksgiving shedding tears or sitting for a bit with grief over what a strange holiday, and year, this has been.

“It’s not getting over the emotions, but getting through them,” said Floyd. “The last thing people should do is be ashamed of those emotions.”

“We can still generate joy even though there’s a sense of sadness or a sense of loss,” he said.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. You can reach Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 (U.S.) or 877-330-6366 (Canada) and The Trevor Project at 866-488-7386.

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(NEW YORK) — Millions more vaccinated adults across the U.S. became eligible for a COVID-19 booster shot on Friday. And yet, the vast majority of vaccinated Americans were already eligible — many just didn’t know it.

According to an October survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4 in 10 vaccinated adults were unsure if they qualified for a booster. So far, just 32 million Americans have received a booster, or around 18% of the more than 182 million adults who are fully vaccinated.

In announcing the latest recommendations, public health experts at the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC expressed hope that they would cut through the confusion, simplifying the decision for Americans who are wondering: Do I need a booster shot?

Here’s what the experts say.

Should you get a booster?

The question has been hotly debated for months but a larger pro-booster consensus has formed over the last week.

Why? A number of reasons, including rising cases in more than half of U.S. states right before a busy holiday travel season and lower temperatures pushing people indoors.

The FDA and CDC made the updated recommendation on Friday. It expanded booster access to all adults who were vaccinated with Moderna or Pfizer over six months ago, and while the recommendation was stronger for everyone over 50 to go get a boost, it applies to everyone 18 to 49.

For Johnson & Johnson recipients, the recommendation already applied to everyone over 18, anytime two months after their shot.

For experts who have long been loud proponents for booster shots, it was a long time coming.

“Enough is enough. Let’s get moving on here,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House and a leader at the National Institutes of Health, said at an event Wednesday, before the FDA and CDC made the final call.

“There’s no doubt that immunity wanes. It wanes in everyone. It’s more dangerous in the elderly, but it’s across all age groups,” Fauci said, citing data from Israel and the U.K., where more people were vaccinated sooner and began to first document waning immunity.

Others, like Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, called the decline “both predicted and predictable.”

“And the way you fix it is you give that third immunization,” he said.

Both Hotez and Fauci believe the vaccines should be used not just to prevent hospitalizations and death, but also infection — particularly because of the risk of long-COVID, a concerning side effect of the disease that is rare in vaccinated people but can include long-term fatigue, brain fog and shortness of breath.

“When I got my third immunization, why was I so eager to do it? Well, of course I didn’t want to go to the hospital or ICU, but also I didn’t want to get COVID,” Hotez said.

“I didn’t want to get gray matter brain degeneration and cognitive decline and have a brain scan that looks like somebody 20 years older.”

But for those still on the fence about the personal choice, Dr. Anna Durbin, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, laid out risk scenarios to consider.

“It really comes down to your comfort level and just what’s going to make you as a person feel safer,” Durbin said.

If you’re traveling overseas or live in areas of high transmission, if you’re elderly or have underlying conditions or are frequently out in the community for work, those are all reasons to get a booster, Durbin said.

For young, healthy people who don’t feel at risk, Durbin said to keep an eye on rising cases in your area. Consider getting a booster to help tamp down transmission, but also to protect yourself ahead of a surge, Durbin said.

“If we’re gonna see a new wave, it’s going to be over the winter months most likely. And if you get boosted now, that’s going to provide you really good protection through that period of time,” Durbin said.

That said, don’t panic if you can’t book an appointment right away — particularly as demand surges with the new recommendation, experts say.

“I would not view it as an emergency that people need to line up on the day of approval and get their boosters necessarily that weekend,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

It’s still far more important for unvaccinated people to get vaccinated, Barouch said, particularly ahead of the holidays.

“The most important thing is for everybody who will be celebrating to be vaccinated, if they’re eligible to be vaccinated. Now, additional boosts may be useful. But the most important thing is that people be vaccinated primarily,” he said.

Why has it been so confusing?

To put it simply: “The reason why there is some confusion is because it has been confusing,” Barouch said.

“Guidelines are changing,” Barouch said. “And in some cases, the guidelines are changing for good reasons: They’re changing because what we’re seeing is a changing pandemic.”

Last week, a patchwork of booster guidance emerged as governors in over a dozen states called for all adults to get a booster before the federal agencies weighed in, acting to combat spiking cases and overwhelmed hospitals.

Hotez commended the states for making the “medically correct” decision and being “more nimble” than the original decision from the CDC and FDA, but acknowledged the schism it created in the public health guidance.

“Not as elegant as you’d like — to have the states be out front by a week or so, but you know, when you’re in the middle of a pandemic, sometimes things don’t go smoothly as you’d like,” Hotez said.

Some, like Hotez, have always believed boosters would be necessary, even before data started to trickle in on waning immunity, and think confusion could’ve been avoided if the public was always told to expect a booster.

“It should have been messaged to the American people from the beginning that, by the way, don’t be surprised when the call comes out to get a third immunization,” he said.

Still, there’s a fine line to walk in urging booster shots for those vaccinated six months ago while also encouraging the most impactful group, unvaccinated people, to get their primary vaccinations. The vaccines continue to protect well against hospitalization and death for many months.

“We can give all the booster doses we want and until we get people vaccinated, or they all get infected, we’re going to continue to see transmission of COVID,” Durbin said.

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(LONDON) — The UK approved a new HIV treatment that requires an injection every other month, rather than the current routine of taking pills every day.

The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence estimated that around 13,000 people will now be eligible for cabotegravir with rilpivirine, the injectable medication.

There were around 103,000 people living with HIV in the UK in 2018, according to the British government’s statistics.

“It is an exciting and progressive step in the fight against HIV,” Dr. Todd Ellerin, director of infectious diseases at South Shore Health and ABC News contributor said. Ellerin is also on the speakers bureau of ViiV Healthcare which helped develop the injectable HIV treatment.

Besides the new revolutionary injection method, the current treatment for HIV is lifelong antiretroviral tablets that are taken each day. The medication suppresses the virus in the blood to undetectable levels, thereby preventing AIDS from occurring and eliminating transmission.

The injections block the same enzymes as the pills do, as Ellerin explained, but allow the medication to stay in the body much longer permitting monthly or bimonthly re-dosing, so patients don’t need to take pills every day.

The shot called Cabenuva (a combination of cabotegravir and rilpivirine) was already approved by the FDA in January, though with a more frequent dosage of once a month.

“[The] thing I like about injectables is less is more,” Ellerin said. “The medication approved in the UK will be once every two months, which makes it easier for the patients to come to the office rather than coming every month,” he added.

“For many, taking daily pills is not easy. Sometimes they forget, some may have other issues with taking pills, but the injection is suitable for those who prefer a more intermittent method,” he added.

However, there are challenges to this method. One, is the logistics of the injection, as the jabs must be administered at the health care provider’s office for now, Ellerin said.

“The biggest challenge is the logistic hurdle for giving these [shots] in the office, especially in the pandemic,” said Ellerin.

Also, if patients don’t show up for their injection, that increases the risk of viral replication rebound, Ellerin said. With pills, you can remember to take them the next day and have a stock of them at home.

Both in Britain and the United States, cabotegravir and rilpivirine can be prescribed and used after an initial oral (tablet) lead-in period.

“This is why people who are newly diagnosed with HIV can’t start their treatment with injection,” Ellerin said.

There are hopes that by the first quarter of 2022, the FDA also approves the bimonthly injection, and with that more patients might choose this method over pills, especially if the COVID-19 situation eases, according to Ellerin.

“As of now, this is not a preventive method. It is just for maintenance treatment. There are also injections for prevention down the way. But that is another story,” Ellerin said.

Ellerin also said that the reason the injections are available at clinics only is that this is the way it was studied in clinical trials and that these are buttocks injections that are difficult to self-administer at home.

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(NEW YORK) — A group of seven women are suing Yale University, claiming they underwent invasive and painful procedures for in-vitro fertilization and received saline instead of fentanyl, an opioid painkiller.

According to the complaint, the women received saline after a nurse at the Yale University Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Clinic stole fentanyl for her personal use last year and replaced it with saline.

As a result, the women underwent a fertility procedure — oocyte retrieval — without pain management, according to the complaint, which described the process as “excruciating.”

“Oocyte egg retrieval is an extremely invasive procedure,” the law firm representing the women said in a statement. “Doctors and nurses explained to these patients that this surgery would require a dose of fentanyl to alleviate pain. However, each was then unknowingly treated with saline instead.”

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in state court in Waterbury, Connecticut, by the women and their spouses, accuses Yale University of failing to follow protocols and thereby allowing the fentanyl to be tampered with.

The complaint also alleges there were “hundreds” of incidents in which saline was substituted for fentanyl.

“Yale University takes no responsibility for the hundreds of fentanyl substitution events that took place at the REI Clinic; it blames the single nurse who was able to steal the fentanyl, unabated, for more than twenty weeks,” the complaint said.

“But for years, Yale University recognized the lurking danger of opioid diversion and the catastrophic injuries posed by healthcare worker opioid substitution,” according to the lawsuit.

The nurse, Donna Monticone, pleaded guilty in March to one count of tampering with a consumer product and surrendered her nursing license. She was sentenced in May to four weekends in prison, three months of home confinement and three years of supervised release.

A Yale University spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit.

In March, following Monticone’s guilty plea, a Yale spokesperson issued a statement stating patients had been informed and that “changes are underway.”

“Yale has informed patients that there is no reason to believe that the nurse’s action harmed their health or the outcome of their treatment. The Fertility Center routinely uses a combination of pain medications during procedures and modifies the medications if there are signs of discomfort,” the spokesperson said in March, according to the New Haven Register. “Changes are underway in procedures, recordkeeping, and physical storage that will prevent this type of activity from happening again.”

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, also alleges that the women’s concerns and reports of “torturous pain” were dismissed.

“Yale University providers were alerted to the problem with its supply of fentanyl, the sole analgesic administered to women during oocyte retrievals, through patients’ intraoperative screams and postoperative reports of torturous pain, but, upon information and belief, Yale University never investigated these reports,” the complaint said. “Instead, pain was minimized as ‘normal’ for the invasive procedure, or attributed to the unavailability of an anesthesiologist on Saturdays and Sundays.”

The allegation of pain being dismissed is one that may ring true for many women, according to Dr. Jessica Shepherd, a board-certified gynecologist and chief medical officer of Verywell Health, an online medical resource.

Shepherd is not affiliated with Yale University and has no involvement with or direct knowledge of the case.

“Usually the key complaint is feeling dismissed, that patients haven’t been heard,” she said of her own personal experience with female patients who have sought her care. “It’s one thing to be able to express what you’re feeling, but even after that, what are the actions that are taken in order to reach some joint resolution of decreasing discomfort, addressing the situation, finding alternatives.”

Research through the years has also shown that women’s pain is often interpreted differently than men’s by medical providers.

A study published in April in the Journal of Pain, for instance, found that when the same level of pain was expressed by female and male patients, female patients’ pain was viewed as less intense than men’s. The study also found that female patients were prescribed more psychotherapy for for their pain, while male patients were prescribed more pain medication.

In another study, women were found to have had to wait nearly 15 minutes longer to receive pain medication in an emergency room setting than men.

“It’s a subjective symptom so it’s hard to put objectivity to it, like you would say, blood pressure, or pulse,” Shepherd said of pain. “And I think there are stereotypes about pain sensitivity and endurance of pain, so from a female perspective, it may be looked at not being able to endure as much pain, but that’s not really how pain should be monitored or evaluated.”

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(NEW YORK) — With a winter virus surge lurking and no readily available vaccines, Thanksgiving 2020 was very different for most families. This year, expectations are much higher.

But even this year, a recent uptick in COVID-19 cases means public health experts are still urging caution. Health professionals still agree that getting vaccinated is the single best a person can do to protect themselves and their loved ones — especially unvaccinated children.

“Vaccines are only as efficacious as the number of people that get them. So a good time to remind people to get their COVID vaccines if they’re still holding out,” said Dr. Molly Fleece, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. “What we do not want to see this year is a so-called twin-demic, where we have peaks of influenza as well as COVID during our holiday season.”

Layering different protective measures is the best overall strategy, experts told ABC News. Dr. Anne Liu, an infectious disease and allergy specialist at Stanford University, advises people “to not rely just on vaccination, but to also be thoughtful about when to implement masking and rapid testing.”

Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner, said she’s asking family members to limit activities that could potentially expose them to COVID-19 in the days leading up to Thanksgiving.

“We are asking everybody to reduce their overall risk for the three- to five-day period before, and we’re all taking a rapid test the morning of,” she added.

Another option is testing.

“Testing ahead of time does make a low-risk situation with all vaccinated people even lower risk,” said Dr. Paul Sax, clinical director of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “I especially recommend it if someone at the gathering is older or potentially immunocompromised.”

There are multiple types of COVID-19 tests, including PCR tests, rapid tests and antibody tests. Infectious disease experts agreed that an antibody test, which looks for traces of a prior infection or prior vaccination in your blood, isn’t going to be a helpful way to protect your family over the holidays. Instead, opt for a PCR test, if you have time to wait for the results, or, a rapid test — less accurate, but faster.

“PCR test is obviously the best,” said Dr. Marc Siegel, director of infectious diseases at George Washington University. Unfortunately, during times of high demand these tests can be hard to take or results are delayed. Sax suggests that if a person is asymptomatic, doing a rapid antigen test the day before and the day of the gathering would be reasonable in lieu of a PCR test.

Once gathered, experts also suggest paying attention to ventilation. Weather permitting, have parts of gatherings outdoors helps decrease risk. It’s admittedly easier in some states.

“We’re going to actually have it outside — it’s supposed to be 65 and sunny on Thanksgiving day,” said Dr. George Rutherford, a doctor and infectious disease researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. “Plus, we can get a lot more people at the table because we can string tables together.”

But there are still options for those in colder climates.

“Even in a cold environment, it’s possible to open up a window,” said Siegel. “You might be losing some of the heat, but at least opening up a window on each side of the room to allow some room air to circulate.” Using air filters is another consideration, Sax added.

If possible, those with prior vaccinations should get their boosters before the holiday, experts said.

Ultimately, between rapid testing, better knowledge of COVID-19 transmission and the mass availability of vaccines, this year’s holiday season has the potential to be more joyous than last year’s.

Lauren Joseph, a student at Stanford Medical School, and Jacob Warner, an internal medicine resident at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, are contributors to the ABC News Medical Unit.

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(VACAVILLE, Calif.) — Emily Johnson had planned on giving birth to her second child in a hospital, with an epidural.

Instead, Johnson, 31, of Vacaville, California, gave birth to her son, Thomas Alan, on Nov. 4, on her front lawn, with no pain medication.

Johnson told “Good Morning America” she and her husband, Michael Johnson, announced their son’s birth on Facebook by posting, “Thomas is here and there is Ring footage.”

“He’s a pretty quiet and chill little dude,” Emily Johnson said of her son, noting the contrast with his “chaotic arrival.” “He just stares and watches the world go by or sleeps.”

Thomas’s unconventional birth story began around 6:30 p.m., a week before Emily’s Johnson’s due date, when she started feeling contractions that were around 10 minutes apart.

Remembering the 18-hour labor she’d had with her 3-year-old son, Emily Johnson said she and her husband thought they had plenty of time and kept monitoring the contractions.

When the contractions began to quicken just after 9 p.m., the Johnsons said they called Emily’s mom to come watch Blake, and called the hospital to tell them they were on their way.

“While Mike was getting the car packed up, the contractions went from three minutes to two minutes to one minute very rapidly,” said Emily Johnson. “And then when I was standing at the car door, I just couldn’t get in the car.”

Though the hospital was just five minutes away, Emily Johnson said she knew she wasn’t going to make it.

She moved herself to the front lawn of her home, and her husband and her mother, Kristy Sparks, who had arrived to care for Blake, began to deliver the baby while on the phone with a 911 dispatcher.

“The dispatcher really helped with the process,” said Emily Johnson. “She really guided Mike and my mom through as they were trying to keep me as calm as possible because I was having a baby on the lawn.”

At 10:42 p.m., just two minutes after paramedics arrived, Thomas Alan was born — a healthy 7 pounds, 11 ounces.

“I was right there by her side with one hand on the speakerphone and one hand with a flashlight,” said Michael Johnson. “Her mom was there to catch the baby”

Michael Johnson was able to cut the umbilical cord on the front lawn, and then paramedics transported baby and mom to the hospital.

It was there that the Johnsons said they realized their Ring camera captured Thomas’ birth.

“When Michael got to the hospital, he started looking at the footage and showing it to the nurses,” said Emily Johnson, adding that they were able to figure out how Thomas’s birth took less than 30 minutes.

Though Thomas’s birth didn’t unfold exactly as planned, it did happen on a special day: He was born on the same day as his late paternal great-grandfather, Alan, from whom he gets his middle name. And he was born two days before the 82nd birthday of his maternal great-grandfather, Thomas, from whom he gets his first name.

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(ANN ARBOR, Mich.) — Public health officials are investigating an influenza outbreak at a Michigan university that has resulted in more than 500 cases, as several schools have also seen surges in flu activity.

The University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus in Washtenaw County has reported over 525 cases among students since Oct. 6 — about three-quarters of them among people unvaccinated against the flu, school officials said this week.

The university said it is tracking a “large and sudden increase” in cases, with nearly all reported in the past two weeks.

“While we often start to see some flu activity now, the size of this outbreak is unusual,” Juan Luis Marquez, medical director at the Washtenaw County Health Department, said in a statement.

A team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is helping the university and local and state health departments investigate the outbreak, including how the flu is spreading.

Amid the surge, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is calling on people to get the flu vaccine, as vaccine administrations are down by about 26% compared to this time last year and COVID-19 cases are also on the rise.

“This outbreak comes at a time when COVID-19 infections are again surging in Michigan, with case rates, positivity rates, hospitalizations and deaths all increasing,” the department said in a release Wednesday. “State and local public health officials are concerned with the potential for increased strain on health systems if COVID-19 and influenza cases surge at the same time this winter.”

Other campuses are also battling flu outbreaks. Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, has logged 150 flu cases among students since Nov. 1, most of which were last week, Joe Cardona, the vice president of university relations, told ABC News. In response, the school has been holding flu vaccination clinics for students and staff this week.

Spikes in flu cases have also been seen at Florida State University and Florida A&M University, the Associated Press reported earlier this month.

Public health experts have warned that this flu season might be more severe, following last season’s mild flu activity.

Flu cases saw a significant drop during the 2020-2021 season according to the CDC — likely due in part to people wearing masks, practicing frequent hand hygiene and socially distancing to help limit the spread of COVID-19.

“As we head into respiratory virus season, it is important to take every mitigation measure we can to prevent outbreaks of the flu, RSV and COVID-19,” Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement. “Wearing masks, washing hands, social distancing and getting vaccinated for the flu and COVID-19 will help prevent the spread of illness.”

ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.

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