Topline
New Covid-19 booster for highly contagious omicron variant may launch shortly after Labor Day, according to multiple reports, all 12 and older of Americans will be eligible for the vaccine, which experts hope will provide an additional tool to fight the coronavirus and prevent a winter surge.
A nurse injects Pfizer with COVID-19 Strengthening Needle.
MediaNews Group via Getty Images
Key Facts
According to Bloomberg The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to sign off next week for the new bivalent Covid vaccine, which targets the original Covid strain as well as the omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5, the report said. A source familiar with the process.
Then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet on September 1-2, Director Rochelle Walensky is likely to give final approval to the lenses soon, paving the way for them to go live as soon as September 3, according to Bloomberg.
According to The New York Times reported that Pfizer’s booster will be available to all people 12 and older, while Moderna’s injection is only available to adults.
Those who have received one or two booster shots are still eligible for the omicron vaccine, Times reported that although Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine regulator who has recently accepted the FDA, told the media that it may recommend that after obtaining the reorganization Wait “several months” before the booster dose.
Those high-risk critically ill patients who were recently vaccinated with the original Covid vaccine will still be protected “for a period of time” but should receive an omicron-specific booster within “a few months”, Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Forbes
, Canada Those who are prone to serious illnesses who have not been vaccinated recently should get an omicron booster immediately.
Adalja said that for those who are not at high risk and are kept up to date on Covid vaccines, this may It is beneficial to wait “to see how the data play out”, namely how well the vaccine protects against infection and how the virus “looks like when boosters are available”, including whether it mutates.
Big numbers
10 to 15 million. That’s how many omicron boosters will be available to start out of a total of 171 million injections, according to a source familiar with the distribution of the vaccine, quoted by Bloomberg.
Key Quotes
“We really have to do better to protect the American public,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s Chief Medical Officer (Dr. Anthony S. Fauci) adviser, told The Times this week . “We are in the midst of a BA.5 epidemic and we are far from where we want to be.”
Surprising fact
According to the CDC, only about half of those who received the primary series of vaccines received a booster dose.
Main Background
FDA in June recommended that pharmaceutical companies update Covid vaccines to target omicron substrains BA.4 and BA.5. Moderna and Pfizer this week submitted their respective emergency use authorization applications for booster injections for BA.4 and BA.5 to the FDA. Closely related subvariants are rapidly dominating the US: BA.5 accounted for 88.7% of all coronavirus infections this week, according to CDC estimates. Although cases gradually began to decline, the new strain led to a rise in Covid infections and hospitalizations in June and July. The data suggest that the new variant is more effective at evading immunity from vaccines and previous infections than previous Covid strains. These strains have specific mutations in the spike protein (the part of the virus that binds to human cells) that helps them do this. The federal government has warned that several factors, including winter weather, a fast-moving virus and weakened immunity, could lead to an increase in severe coronavirus cases. American complacency may hinder vaccination, Marks tells Times work, while some experts have raised concerns that repeated booster shots may be an impractical and infeasible solution to the pandemic.
Further reading
Biden administration plans new booster campaign soon after Labor Day (New York Times)
Biden team aims to target Omicron by Labor Day (Bloomberg)
FDA recommends Covid booster to target highly contagious Omicron sub-variant – this is when you should shoot your next shot (Forbes)
We can’t “get out of the woods” from the Covid pandemic, experts warn (Forbes)
