The Food and Drug Administration approved two updated COVID vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna, which will target the KP.2 variant

The FDA Approved New COVID Vaccines. Who Can Get One—And When? They are recommended for everyone in the U.S. six months and older

The Food and Drug Administration approved two updated COVID vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna, which will target the KP.2 variant

• The Food and Drug Administration has approved two new COVID vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna, for the 2024–2025 cold and flu season.
• The vaccine is recommended for everyone in the U.S. six months and older, and experts said everyone who is eligible should consider getting the shot.
• The vaccines are similar to previous COVID vaccines, and experts don’t expect they will cause any new side effects.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved updated COVID shots from Pfizer and Moderna Thursday, setting the stage for a vaccine rollout in the coming weeks.

In a statement announcing approval of the updated vaccines, the administration said it will target the Omicron variant KP.2, which is a descendant of the highly contagious JN.1 variant.

“In June, the FDA asked that the 2024-2025 vaccines encode a single variant, and the vaccines just approved today have the KP.2 version of Omicron, which has recently been a dominant circulating variant,” Otto Yang, MD, infectious disease physician at UCLA Health, told Health.

FDA approval for updated vaccines came earlier this year compared to last year; in 2023, the administration approved shots for the coming cold and flu season in mid-September. Experts said the expedited approval could come down to the fact that the vaccines on offer this year are similar to those offered last year. “It appears that the formulations are unchanged except for the RNA sequence in the vaccine, which is the reason FDA approval was relatively quick,” Yang said.

The vaccines were recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in June.

Experts don’t think the updated vaccines will cause new side effects or pose new risks, Thomas Russo, MD, an infectious diseases expert at the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, told Health. “But, obviously, there will be surveillance for such,” Russo said.

Below, experts explain what to know about the updated shots, including who needs one and when you should get one.

Who Should Get the New Vaccines?

The new vaccines are recommended for everyone six months and older, per the FDA statement. Though the virus is now considerably less dangerous than it has been in years past, everyone who is eligible should consider getting it, William Schaffner, MD, professor in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Health.

“Both of these viruses [influenza and COVID] can strike perfectly normal children and young adults, and they can put them in the emergency room,” Schaffner said. “The CDC’s advisory committee looked at these data and said there’s enough serious illness in the young and healthy” to recommend the updated vaccines.

The vaccine may help lessen severity of illness for those infected with the virus; it may also reduce the chances of developing long COVID, Joseph Khabbaza, MD, a pulmonary medicine doctor at Cleveland Clinic, told Health. “I’m healthy, and the reason I get [vaccinated] is I’m almost always training for a marathon, and I want to minimize how much COVID can sideline me if I get sick while training,” he explained.

The new vaccines are expected to provide four to six months of protection, similar to previous vaccines, Russo said.

As to when you should get your shot, experts said the answer depends on your overall health and your plans for the next couple of months. “There may be some people who know they’re going to be traveling or going to a wedding, and they know there’s a lot of COVID out there,” Schaffner said. These people may want to get vaccinated sooner rather than later when the shots become available so that they’re protected by the time of their event. But “if you can wait a little bit, that’s better because the protection can extend” longer through cold and flu season, he added.

That said, high-risk individuals may want to go ahead and get vaccinated—if they haven’t had a COVID infection in the past four months or a COVID vaccine in the past two months—given that COVID cases are rising now, Russo said.

There’s no hard-and-fast rule for getting the COVID vaccine by a certain date, experts said, though it’s good to keep in mind that cases do tend to spike as the weather gets colder. You can get the flu shot at the same time as the COVID vaccine, and experts generally recommend getting the flu shot before Halloween, Russo said. You should speak to your healthcare provider about the best timing for the flu and COVID vaccines for your individual health, experts said.

You should be able to get the vaccine at your local pharmacy or a doctor’s office, but we don’t yet know when it will be available. “I know they’re ready to ship, but getting them into pharmacies and getting appointments set up is still going to take a little time,” Russo said.

Your healthcare provider may be able to provide more details about when you can make an appointment for vaccination.

Could the Updated Shots End the ‘Summer Surge’?

The U.S. has seen rising COVID infections in recent weeks, in what some experts have called a “summer surge.”

“The numbers this summer appear to be as high a summer surge as we have ever seen, although it is difficult to compare to prior surges, since testing requirements and reporting have changed over time and we don’t have apples-to-apples number comparisons,” Yang said.

This summer, the test positivity rate has crept up, as have the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths caused by COVID, according to data from the CDC.

As of mid-August, the test positivity rate was 18.1%, and 2.4% of emergency department visits were due to COVID.

Whether or not the surge will continue into the fall—and whether the new vaccines affect the rate of infections in the U.S.—remains to be seen, experts said.

Right now, healthcare workers are prioritizing getting people vaccinated, especially given the COVID vaccination rate last year. “We did so poorly with the last round. Only about 23%” of people in the U.S. received the vaccine, Russo said. “We definitely need to do better, and we need some new strategies” to get people vaccinated, he said.

This story originally appeared on: Health News - Author:Maggie O'Neill