The retooled vaccines could be available for all Americans 12 and older as soon as Labor Day weekend.
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s updated Covid-19 booster shots targeting the extremely contagious omicron variant, clearing one of the last hurdles for the Biden administration’s fall booster campaign.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still has to recommend the shot as well. The agency’s advisory panel is set to meet to discuss the boosters this week and could approve them as soon as Thursday afternoon. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky also needs to sign off on the shots, which she is expected to do shortly after, meaning shots could be available as soon as this weekend.
Fearing a winter surge of Covid and a new variant that is highly effective at evading antibodies from previous Covid infections and vaccinations, the FDA advised pharmaceutical companies in June to update coronavirus boosters to target the omicron substrains BA.4 and BA.5. The agency did so after a spike in coronavirus infections last winter, which was fueled by the omicron variant, when average daily Covid deaths topped 2,700 and daily hospitalizations exceeded 20,000.
