Washington, Sept. 2 (BUS): The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has endorsed the updated COVID-19, opening the way for a fall vaccination campaign that could ease the winter wave if enough Americans roll up their sleeves.
New boosters targeting the most popular omicron strains today should start hitting pharmacies and clinics within days, the AP reports.
CDC Director Rochelle Walinsky’s decision came shortly after the agency’s advisers voted in favor of the recommendation.
The injections “can help restore protection that has diminished since the previous vaccination and are designed to provide broader protection,” she said in a statement.
The modified shots offered by Pfizer and rival Moderna offer Americans a chance to get the latest protection in yet another critical period of the pandemic.
It’s the composite or “bivalent” shots – half the original vaccine and half the protection against the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron versions that now cause nearly all COVID-19 infections.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisers have struggled to figure out who should get the new boosters and when because only a similarly modified vaccine, not the exact prescription, has been studied on people so far.
But in the end, the committee deemed the updated injection the best option given that the United States still had tens of thousands of COVID-19 cases and about 500 deaths each day — even before the expected new winter wave.
The CDC recommendation was the last step before the shots began. Pfizer said it expects to deliver 3 million doses to vaccination sites across the country by Tuesday.
The original COVID-19 vaccines still provide strong protection against severe illness and death, especially among younger, healthier people who have received at least one booster dose.
But these vaccines are designed to target the strain of virus that circulated in early 2020. Effectiveness declines as new mutations emerge and more time has passed since a person’s last shot. Since April, hospitalization rates for people over 65 have jumped, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The updated shots are only used as a booster, not for first vaccinations at all. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the Pfizer bivalent option for people 12 years of age and older while Moderna is for adults only.
The CDC said more than 1,400 people have been included in several studies of a previous modification of a vaccine prescription targeting an earlier omicron strain called BA.1.
A combo shot targeting the omicron has proven to be safe and capable of activating virus-fighting antibodies, and European regulators on Thursday recommended the use of this type of booster.
In the United States, the FDA wanted fall enhancers to target the currently circulating Omicron strains. Rather than wait until potentially November for more human studies to be completed, the agency agreed to test mice that showed the latest modification elicited a similarly good immune response.
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