August 22, 2024
Source: Washington Post
Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,
The mRNA coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna tailored for the KP.2 variant could be available within a week.
The Food and Drug Administration approved new mRNA coronavirus vaccines Thursday, clearing the way for shots manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to start hitting pharmacy shelves and doctor’s offices within a week.
Health officials encourage annual vaccination against the coronavirus, similar to yearly flu shots. Everyone 6 months and older should receive a new vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends.
The FDA has yet to approve an updated vaccine from Novavax, which uses a more conventional vaccine development method but has faced financial challenges.
On Friday, the Biden administration announced it would restart its free covid-test-by-mail program in late September, allowing Americans to order four free test kits at covidtests.gov.
Our scientific understanding of coronavirus vaccines has evolved since they debuted in late 2020. Here’s what to know about the new vaccines.
What to know
Why are there new vaccines?
The coronavirus keeps evolving to overcome our immune defenses, and the shield offered by vaccines weakens over time. That’s why federal health officials want people to get an annual updated coronavirus vaccine designed to target the latest variants. They approve them for release in late summer or early fall to coincide with flu shots that Americans are already used to getting.
The underlying vaccine technology and manufacturing process are the same, but components change to account for how the virus morphs. The new vaccines target the KP.2 variant because most recent covid cases are caused by that strain or closely related ones.
Covid is less dangerous overall than it was earlier in the pandemic because our bodies have become used to fighting the virus off and nearly everyone has some degree of immunity from receiving shots or getting sick. A new shot is meant to shore up existing defenses.
“It’s an opportunity to mitigate or to reduce that risk even further rather than just relying on what happened in the past,” said Robert Hopkins Jr., medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a physician in Arkansas.
Who needs a new coronavirus vaccine?
The United States differs from other countries in recommending an updated coronavirus vaccine for everyone except young infants, rather than just those at heightened risk for severe disease because they are 65 or older, are moderately to severely immunocompromised or have serious medical conditions.
Health officials rejected a more targeted recommendation, with some contending that it’s easier to tell everyone to get vaccinated than to try to define what makes a person high-risk. Most Americans have a risk factor for severe covid, such as being overweight or having diabetes.
Critics of this approach, including Paul A. Offit, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, worry that it detracts from the urgency of vaccinating vulnerable people who have a harder time mounting an immune response to the coronavirus.
Have you taken the vaccine? Were you mandated to? By whom?
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