RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said he'll keep to a lower public profile this week after testing positive for COVID-19 on Monday.
In a tweet, the Democratic governor described the case as mild and that he was feeling fine.
“I’m working remotely for the rest of the week and ready to be back out and about by the weekend,” Cooper said.
Cooper, 66, attended the National Governors Association annual meeting in Atlantic City, New Jersey, last week. The meeting ended Friday and he returned to Raleigh, Cooper spokesperson Jordan Monaghan said in a text.
Cooper also tested positive for COVID-19 in June 2022. He also initially described that as a mild case.
The FDA had told Americans to expect an updated fall vaccine against COVID-19, just like they get a new flu shot every fall. Even though most of the population has either been infected or had at least one round of vaccinations, the coronavirus keeps churning out new varieties.
What’s in use in the U.S. now are combination shots from Pfizer and Moderna that mix the original strain with protection against last year’s most common omicron variants, called BA.4 and BA.5. But just 17% of Americans rolled up their sleeves for a combo booster.
And while the FDA did allow seniors and others at high risk to get an extra booster dose this spring, most people will be many months beyond their last shot by fall.
Those currently available shots do still help prevent severe disease and death even as XBB variants have taken over. But protection gradually wanes over time and was short-lived against milder infection even before the virus, inevitably, evolved again.
“We need a better vaccine. We should be updating it,” said one adviser, Dr. Eric Rubin, an infectious disease doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
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