Two years into the pandemic, Jackie Hansen still only left her house to visit the doctor, her immune system so damaged by cancer and lupus that COVID-19 vaccines weren’t effective.
So Hansen got relief — meager doses of the first drug to offer six months of protection for people with no other way to fight the virus.
“It’s an injection of life,” Hansen said after receiving Evusheld’s injections at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center clinic. She said she was anxious to “hug my grandchildren without fear.”
As many as seven million Americans with weakened immune systems have been sidelined in the nation’s efforts to get back on track.
A weak immune system cannot prepare to fight off the virus after vaccination in the same way that a healthy one can.
Not only do these patients remain at elevated risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19, they may also harbor infections that could create other variants.
As more parts of the country now abandon mask mandates and other precautions as the wave of omicron infections subsides, how to keep that forgotten group protected has now taken on new urgency.
This is “fast becoming an epidemic of the vulnerable,” said Dr. Jacob Lemieux, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
While healthy vaccinated people can return to pre-pandemic activities with little fear of severe consequences, “those who are immunologically compromised — despite vaccination, despite taking all precautions — cannot do so and remain at risk.”
“We are going to have to deal with this as a society and it is going to be a really difficult issue,” he added.
In fact, amid discussions about how omicron is less severe for many people, this contagious variant highlighted how people with compromised immune systems need more defenses.
“The pandemic hasn’t forgiven them yet,” said Dr. Ghady Haidar, an infectious disease specialist at UMPC, where people hospitalized with severe COVID-19 symptoms have been a mix of unvaccinated and immunocompromised patients.
Hansen, a retired nurse, has had tough conversations about why she can’t be in contact with unvaccinated people.
“Other people’s behavior really affects and endangers the lives of people like me,” said Hansen, who nearly died of influenza shortly before the pandemic.