The FDA must now decide which strains should be included in the next round of shots to offer the best protection for a fall wave.
BA.1 was the first omicron variant; it became dominant in the U.S. in December but has since faded. BA.4 and BA.5 — considered the most contagious form of the virus to date — are rapidly gaining ground in the U.S. For the week ending June 25, the two subvariants combined made up about 52% of all new Covid cases in the country, according to the. They overtook BA.2.12.1, another subvariant that only became dominant in mid-May.
The existing booster shots, from Pfizer and Moderna, target the original coronavirus strain identified in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and thus have been a poor match for omicron and its growing family of subvariants. “I'm not sure we have enough evidence to support a change today,” said committee member Adam Berger, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, before votingCommittee member Dr. Hayley Altman-Gans, a pediatrician at Stanford University Medical Center, acknowledged her fellow panel members' uncertainties, but also cautioned against waiting to make a decision until they had all of the data, noting they've"fallen behind" the virus in the past. She voted yes.
BA.4 and BA.5, though subvariants of omicron, are significantly different from the first version of the variant, so it’s unclear whether a vaccine that targets the original variant would work well against them.
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