The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday signed off on updated versions of Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s Covid boosters, allowing vaccinations to begin.
The final endorsement, from CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, came shortly after the members of the agency's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted in favor of recommending the shots."This recommendation followed a comprehensive scientific evaluation and robust scientific discussion," Walensky said in a statement. "If you are eligible, there is no bad time to get your Covid-19 booster and I strongly encourage you to receive it.
Despite the concerns and the desire for more information, the committee overwhelmingly voted to recommend the doses."We anticipate there will be a tough winter season ahead, both with flu and with Covid-19, and I feel our job is to do our best to protect public health," said the committee’s chair, Dr. Grace Lee, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University. She voted yes.
The process of tweaking the Covid vaccine to target a different variant is similar to how the flu vaccine is updated every year. Those yearly shots are rolled out without human trial data. Beyond preventing severe illness and death, boosters may also protect against coronavirus infections, Ruth Link-Gelles, an epidemiologist at the CDC, said in a presentation to the committee.
The companies also presented data to the committee that showed that the vaccines that target BA.5 elicited strong immune responses in mice.
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