Rising rates of flu, Covid and RSV prompted the agency to urge clinicians to push for more vaccinations.
Not enough Americans are being vaccinated against Covid, the flu and RSV to stem rising numbers of the respiratory illnesses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
The agency issued a health alert to doctors across the country, warning that low vaccination rates amid “ongoing increases in national and international respiratory disease activity” could strain U.S. health care systems in the coming weeks, and called on doctors to encourage their patients to get the shots immediately to protect them for the remainder of the season.
Didn’t they stop making these free? I’m uninsured and would be happy to get another booster but I can’t do out of pocket right now.
You can still get the new Covid shot for free using the CDC’s Bridge Access Program even if you’re uninsured: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/bridge/index.html
Just reinforcing, I got the Covid one free without health insurance, but there was nothing comparable for flu or RSV unfortunately.
Oh thanks! Checking availability now…
they don’t do rsv generally. I think it would have been good if they have. My wife and I caught something and I think it might have been rsv.
Can someone using Firefox (and possibly only if you’re in the U.S.) please check vaccines.gov and scroll down to the FAQs section and see if there’s a “Is my COVID-19 vaccine free?” box listed? I only see that listed in (desktop) Firefox, and it offers a link that 404s, but not on Chrome. Seems like a stupid case to use a user-agent check if it’s not just some bug unique to my system.
Was frustrating when trying to find out if I could still get a free shot without insurance but I finally found a reference to the bridge program.
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Thanks a ton for checking it and the thorough reply! I figured out that uMatrix blocked 4 scripts and 2 XHRs to cdc.gov on that page, and after allowing and cache-free refreshing, the old/erroneous FAQ item disappeared and there was the extra text about the updated vaccine you described. They must be serving an old static version of that page and then replacing/adding sections through those scripts and not checking if they load correctly or not. I’m used to having to allow certain items and domains when sites break but it’s rare for them to fail in such a subtle way I didn’t think to even check the blocks.
I managed to get my updated shot a few days before Thanksgiving at a Walgreens and the initial person at the check-in window had no idea what the bridge program was but the other person they spoke with apparently did and then everything went smoothly.
Thanks again!
Adding screenshots (resized and cropped off bottom):
