The Biden administration wants to reboot the U.S. booster drive with reformulated vaccines this fall. Here’s what we know.
Photo: Scotty Perry/Bloomberg via Getty Images While the U.S. may have led the charge to develop and deploy COVID vaccines, our efforts to get and stay fully vaccinated have not gone well. As the two-year anniversary of the country’s vaccine rollout fast approaches, the U.S. pandemic response seems stuck at a standstill while the coronavirus keeps adapting and spreading at a startling pace. The U.S.
How many Americans are behind on their shots? A lot. According to CDC data, more than a third of Americans over 50, who are considered a higher-risk group for severe COVID, have not gotten a first booster dose despite being eligible for one. And among Americans over 50 who are eligible to get a second booster, nearly 70 percent have not done so. Among people 65 and older, who are at even higher risk, more than 60 percent of those eligible have not gotten a second booster either.
So when will everyone be eligible for a second booster? Not until at least the fall, if everything goes according to plan. And it’s not yet clear if second doses will be offered to everyone or just to adults. Both Pfizer and Moderna have been working on bivalent COVID vaccines for a while now. They actually submitted reformulations for FDA authorization earlier this year that targeted the original Omicron strain, BA.1, but the government then asked them to instead come up with a new formula which also targets the newer Omicron subvariants, particularly BA.5.
It’s also worth noting that vaccine efficacy is not the only factor affecting real-world immunity on a person-to-person basis. Countless Americans now have hybrid immunity, meaning they are both vaccinated and have had COVID, so they’ve got combined protection from both. And many Americans have already had an infection from some strain in the Omicron lineage.
If you are eligible for a booster now, should you go ahead and get it or wait for the updated vaccines? According to the Times, regulators are expected to recommend that anyone who is eligible for another dose right now should get it — not wait for the reformulated vaccines.
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