Fresh booster warning as COVID subvariant spreads in US

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The advisory group on immunisations is warning that four-fifths of Australian adults haven't had an up-to-date COVID booster shot -- as a new omicron subvariant spreads through the United States.

Transcript

00:00 The one that has been getting a bit of press over the last few days is called BA2.86 and

00:06 they are calling it Parola. I'm not quite sure what Parola is, I think it is an asteroid

00:10 but it is also a footballer called Lorenzo Parola, so I don't know who they are naming

00:14 it after. The reason they are a little bit worried about it, and people who know about

00:20 viruses are worried about it, is there is a large number of mutations on this virus

00:25 compared to previous sub-variants. It is not a new variant, it is a sub-variant, still

00:28 in the Omicron family. Over the last few months it has been XBB that people have been worried

00:34 about. This is an alphabet soup of stuff. There has been this sub-family called XBB.

00:42 In fact the next version of vaccines coming out will have XBB in it. Each one is a little

00:47 bit more immune-evasive than the one before, so the vaccine becomes a little less effective

00:55 and it gets around our previous immunity a little bit more. The reason they are worried

00:58 about this one, this is not part of the XBB family. This one harkens back to BA2. This

01:07 one originates with BA2 and is a lineage that comes down from BA2 with a lot of extra mutations.

01:13 We have been here before. Early days, people panic and then it all settles down because

01:19 yes it is a little bit more immune-evasive but not any more severe because Omicron, while

01:24 it is a severe virus, it is not as severe as Delta was. At the moment we simply don't

01:31 know. There is this new one around. There is cause for concern but no epidemiological

01:37 reason to justify that concern yet because it is early days. Nevertheless, four-fifths

01:43 of adults are not up to date with their boosters. How much of a concern is that? It is a huge

01:47 concern and there are still 5 million Australians who have not had the third shot regardless

01:50 of whether it is bivalent or not. The bivalent vaccine, the existing one, does give you quite

01:56 good immunity. That is the latest one? That is the one that is current in Australia. It

02:01 is for BA4 and 5. Because it is part of the Omicron family, it does give you some boost

02:07 to immunity to XBB as well. Later on in the year, at least in the United States, there

02:12 will be an XBB vaccine and presumably that will come here too, although XBB has not been

02:16 quite as dominant in Australia as the other versions. You should be getting the latest

02:21 version. Probably we are into a phase now where it is once a year, unless there is a

02:28 big jump in the virus, it is once a year to keep your immunity topped up. Far too many

02:34 of us have not had that booster, which means we are under immunised and at risk. Also looking

02:41 at sleep. We all know sleep is important for health. It is important for mental health

02:45 and general health. You and I have spoken about this before. There is a bit of a myth

02:49 around that what counts with sleep is duration. We are all aiming for eight hours a night.

02:55 That is a myth. When you look at the studies about sleep, it is much more about sleep quality

03:01 than sleep duration. The best sleep therapy in the world does not turn you from a six

03:06 hour a night sleeper to an eight hour a night sleeper. This is a study which looked at sleep

03:10 quality. One group of people were waking up during the night, so not maintaining their

03:17 sleep. Another group of people who had obstructive sleep apnea. They are stopping breathing and

03:23 waking up. What they showed was if you maintain sleep through the night and not waking up,

03:29 over time your cognition, you don't show as much cognitive decline as people who are waking

03:34 up during the night. It could be the cognitive decline makes you wake up or we are not quite

03:39 sure of the direction of this. People with obstructive sleep apnea, they too have more

03:45 cognitive decline than people who don't have obstructive sleep apnea. It is about sleep

03:49 quality and trying to get a full night's sleep, which is about a darkened room, not having

03:54 alcohol, probably not having alcohol with dinner because alcohol is poisonous for sleep

04:00 and various other sleep hygiene that many of us know about. There is a way, a technique

04:05 called sleep restriction, which I can't go into because we don't have time today, which

04:09 does help you have a longer night's sleep within your sleep duration of better quality.

04:14 So there are ways of solving this problem.

04:16 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended