On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) approved and granted emergency use authorization for updated Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for the upcoming fall and winter season. The shots should be available within days; as of press time, the FDA hadn’t yet approved a third vaccine from drugmaker Novavax.
The FDA said the vaccines will target the KP.2 strain, which is an offshoot of the omicron variant, marking the third time the vaccines have been updated to match circulating strains since the original series. Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, in a statement: “Vaccination continues to be the cornerstone of COVID-19 prevention. These updated vaccines meet the agency’s rigorous, scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality. Given waning immunity of the population from previous exposure to the virus and from prior vaccination, we strongly encourage those who are eligible to consider receiving an updated COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variant.”
The timing of the new vaccines release comes as most of the U.S. is caught in the summer wave of Covid illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (‘CDC’) reported that the number of people testing positive for Covid keeps rising and that emergency room visits for Covid have been increasing since mid-May, with hospitalizations also on the rise.
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