Pfizer, Moderna to receive US approval for new anti-COVID boosters

The latest COVID boosters are expected to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration as early as September 11, arriving alongside the seasonal flu vaccine and shots to protect infants and older adults from R.S.V., a potentially lethal respiratory virus, Report informs referring to The New York Times.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to follow up on Tuesday with an advisory meeting to discuss who should get the new shots, by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. After a final decision by the C.D.C.’s director, millions of doses will be shipped to pharmacies, clinics and health systems nationwide within days.

As COVID cases creep up, the prevention measures could portend the first winter of the decade without a crush of patients pushing hospitals beyond capacity. But a healthy winter is far from a lock: Last year, the updated COVID vaccine made it into the arms of only 20 percent of adults in the United States.

Some experts view that statistic with little alarm because the number of COVID deaths slowed over the last year, thanks to an increasingly immune population and higher vaccine rates among older Americans. Others see this year as an opportunity to protect more vulnerable people from severe illness or death.

Federal officials have been retreating from labeling the new formulation as boosters to previous shots, preferring to recast them as an annual immunization effort akin to the flu vaccine. That shift may reflect concern over the fatigue that some Americans have expressed about yet another round of shots against the virus.

The vaccine campaign will also be the first since the end of the public health emergency, which expired in May. In previous years, the US government bought hundreds of millions of vaccine doses and distributed them for free. This year, private insurance and government payers like Medicare that cover the vast majority of Americans are expected to provide the vaccines to people for no fee.