Key Takeaways
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday recommended that everyone 6 months and older get an updated COVID vaccine when manufacturers release them this fall.
The agency made its decision following a meeting of the CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which found that the virus continues to cause illness, especially as it mutates over time, leaving people less protected even if they were vaccinated or previously had COVID.
Anticipating new fall vaccines, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has asked vaccine manufacturers to target a newer COVID variant called KP.2.
Pfizer and Moderna said they will be able to create such a vaccine by the fall thanks to mRNA technology, which is faster to manipulate and update than protein subunit vaccines like Novavax. Novavax said its fall vaccine will target an earlier COVID variant called JN.1, which it was in the process of developing before the FDA asked the brands to pivot. Novavax expects its vaccine to be protective against KP.2 as well.
Given the manufacturing time needed for vaccines, its difficult to fully match them to the variants circulating at the time they are administered, Anne Monroe, MD, an associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at George Washington University in Washington, DC, told Verywell.
Still, Monroe advises everyone eligible to get the updated vaccine when its available.
Updated vaccines can help protect against infection, hospitalizations, and severe disease and may prevent you from spreading the virus to someone vulnerable if you get sick, she said. People are still dying of this virus.
Studies have shown that vaccines are somewhat protective against getting a COVID infection but very protective against severe disease, Robert Hopkins, MD, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Disease and a liaison to ACIP, told Verywell. Data presented during the ACIP meeting showed that only 11% of hospitalized adult patients between October 2023 and March 2024 had received the 2023-2024 COVID vaccine. In 2023, according to the agency, more than 916,300 people were hospitalized due to COVID, and more than 75,500 people died from the virus.
The recommendation for the updated COVID vaccine applies even to people who have never received a vaccine for the virus. Older vaccines are no longer available, so first-timers will start with the vaccine that will be updated this fall.
If you are 65 and older and/or have a chronic illness, you may have gotten an updated COVID vaccine targeting XBB.1.5 any time since last spring. Hopkins said you are still eligible for another one this coming fall as long as it has been four months since your last dose.
Hopkins says that since COVID cases are rising right now, there are a few things people should do if they get sick:
Use this search engine to find a COVID vaccine in your neighborhood and to find updated vaccines when they become available in the fall. The new shots are expected by August or September.
The information in this article is current as of the date listed, which means newer information may be available when you read this. For the most recent updates on COVID-19, visit ourcoronavirus news page.
By Fran Kritz Kritz is a healthcare reporter with a focus on health policy. She is a former staff writer for Forbes Magazine and U.S. News and World Report.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending that all Americans six months and older get an updated COVID-19 vaccine in the fall, regardless of whether theyve been vaccinated against the virus in the past.
Our top recommendation for protecting yourself and your loved ones from respiratory illness is to get vaccinated, Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH, director of the CDC, said in a statement. Make a plan now for you and your family to get both updated flu and COVID vaccines this fall, ahead of the respiratory virus season.
The guidance comes amid a summer COVID wave, which is now a familiar pattern in the United States. Data from the CDC show that COVID-related emergency room visits for the week ending June 22 were up more than 23% compared to the week before, with deaths increasing by more than 14%.
Heres what you need to know about the vaccine available this fall.
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The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer will target the KP.2 strain of COVID-19, which CDC data show is the second-most common strain of the virus in the U.S. right now. Currently, the KP.3 virus variant is the most common. Both KP.2 and KP.3, along with KP.1.1, are part of the so-called FLiRT variants that are heavily circulating now in the country.
The Novavax vaccine, on the other hand, will target JN.1, the parent variant of KP.2 that was the top strain circulating this past winter.
Officials from the Food and Drug Administration initially recommended that vaccine manufacturers target JN.1. As KP.2 gained dominance, they changed the recommendation to suggest that a new vaccine focus on that strain instead.
So far, vaccines have lowered the risk of hospitalization or death from a COVID infection, Amesh A. Adalja, MD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Health. Its unclear how well and how durably current vaccine technologies are able to do that in the face of a heavily mutating virus, he told Health.
CDC officials did not provide a specific date for when the vaccines will be available, saying only that Moderna, Novavax, and Pfizer will roll out updated vaccines in the fall.
The last COVID-19 vaccine, which was an update to the previous vaccine, was available in the fall of 2023, but only about 20% of Americans actually got it.
Pediatricians and family doctors are going to have to be very, very persuasive to get patients to receive the updated vaccine, John Sellick, DO, an infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at the University at Buffalo, told Health. Last years updated vaccine was not as widely accepted as we had hoped," he continued. "This year will be another challenge.
Adalja stressed the importance of vaccination in people who are considered high risk, which are those who are immunocompromised, over 65, or who have serious underlying health conditions like cancer, diabetes, and heart conditions. The key message should be to vaccinate the high-risk, he said.
However, William Schaffner, MD, an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told Health that its going to be a hard sell to get Americans as a whole to get another COVID-19 vaccine.
We need to get into this framework of, Heres your annual flu shot and your annual COVID shot, he said. Hopefully, by making it part of health maintenance, well get people to accept this better.
A federal jury found that BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee improperly fired an employee for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine and awarded her nearly $700,000.
The federal jury in the case, which was litigated in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, found that the insurance company owes the plaintiff, Tanja Benton, $687,240 in backpay and damages after she was let go in 2022.
The judgment order in the case said Benton proved by a preponderance of the evidence that her refusal to receive the COVID vaccination was based upon a sincerely held religious belief.
At the height of the pandemic and subsequent rollout of vaccines, both the government and federal companies struggled with how to handle workers who refused to be vaccinated for various reasons, chief among them being concerns about the long-term effects of the new inoculations and religious reasons.
Benton had worked at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee primarily as a biostatistical research scientist from 2005 through November 2022 before being let go for the refusal, according to WTVC.
As part of the lawsuit, Benton argued she didnt have a very public-facing job with the insurance company and had a portfolio of a dozen or fewer clients per year. She said interactions with those clients were infrequent and not always in person.
In the lawsuit, Benton said taking the vaccine would anger and dishonor God and that she firmly believes, based upon personal research, that all COVID-19 vaccines are derived from aborted fetus cell lines.
After BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee mandated the vaccine, Benton filed a religious exemption request, which was denied. Once she appealed, she was told there were no exceptions for someone in her role as a biostatistical research scientist, and a company representative encouraged her to try for a different job.
She was then fired and filed the lawsuit in question.
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In the end, Benton prevailed, and the jury awarded her over $177,000 in back pay, $10,000 in compensatory damages, and $500,000 in punitive damages.
The Washington Examiner reached out to BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee for comment.
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WORKERS AT POULTRY and fur farms in Finland will, in the coming days, receive vaccines against bird flu. Fourteen other EU countries have signed up to procure bird-flu vaccines through a programme set up by the European Commission. Americas government has also bought vaccines in anticipation of a pandemic. And it recently commissioned Moderna, a pharmaceutical company, to create an mRNA bird-flu vaccine using a technology that was effective in protecting against covid-19. So why are countries vaccinating people against bird flu?
The illness is also called avian flu or highly pathogenic avian influenza. The usual carriers are wild waterfowl; when these birds migrate, so does the virus. It is easily transmitted to domestic poultry and is highly contagious and deadly for them. Usually it is rare for bird flu to infect mammals, including humans. But the strain of the virus that is currently circulating, H5N1, has infected hundreds of mammals. This spring it was found in dairy cows in Texas. It has since been found in dairy herds in at least 12 American states. With each mammal that is infected, there is a possibility that the virus mutates, allowing it to jump to humans more easily.
The US government will pay Moderna $176 million to develop an mRNA vaccine against a pandemic influenzaan award given as the highly pathogenic bird flu virus H5N1 continues to spread widely among US dairy cattle.
The funding flows through BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, as part of a new Rapid Response Partnership Vehicle (RRPV) Consortium. The program is intended to set up partnerships with industry to help the country better prepare for pandemic threats and develop medical countermeasures, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a press announcement Tuesday.
In its own announcement on Tuesday, Moderna noted that it began a Phase 1/2 trial of a pandemic influenza virus vaccine last year, which included versions targeting H5 and H7 varieties of bird flu viruses. The company said it expects to release the results of that trial this year and that those results will direct the design of a Phase 3 trial, anticipated to begin in 2025.
The funding deal will support late-stage development of a prepandemic vaccine against H5 influenza virus, Moderna said. But the deal also includes options for additional vaccine development in case other public health threats arise.
mRNA vaccine technology offers advantages in efficacy, speed of development, and production scalability and reliability in addressing infectious disease outbreaks, as demonstrated during the Covid-19 pandemic, Moderna CEO Stphane Bancel said in the announcement. We are pleased to continue our collaboration with BARDA to expedite our development efforts for mRNA-based pandemic influenza vaccines and support the global public health community in preparedness against potential outbreaks.
US health officials have said previously that they were in talks with Moderna and Pfizer about the development of a pandemic bird flu vaccine. The future vaccine will be in addition to standard protein-based bird flu vaccines that are already developed. In recent weeks, the health department has said it is working to manufacture 4.8 million vials of H5 influenza vaccine in the coming months. The plans come three months into the H5N1 dairy outbreak, which is very far from the initial hopes of containment.
The US is badly fumbling its response to the unprecedented outbreak, drawing criticism from US-based and international experts alike. Genetic analyses suggest that the virus has been spreading among the countrys dairy cattle since late last year. But it wasnt until months later, on March 25, that the US Department of Agriculture confirmed the first four infected herds in two states (Texas and Kansas). Since then, the outbreak has spread to around 140 herds in 12 statesat least.
Some farms are refusing to test, and experts expect that there is a significant number of undocumented herd infections, particularly given the widespread detection of inactivated H5N1 in the commercial milk supply. Furthermore, of the 140 herds with documented infections, federal officials do not know how many are still actively infected rather than recovered. It is unclear whether infected cows can become reinfected, and if so, how quickly after an infection.
While the risk to the general public is considered to be low currently, farm workers are at higher risk of contracting the infection. To date, there have been three confirmed infections among dairy farm workersone in Texas and two in Michigan, which has had a uniquely robust response to the outbreak. Still, with hundreds to thousands of farm workers at risk of contracting the virus, only 53 people in the country to date have been tested for H5 influenza.
A researcher works in the lab at the Moderna Inc. headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, on Tuesday, March 26, 2024.
Adam Glanzman | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The U.S. government has awarded $176 million to Moderna to advance development of its bird flu vaccine, the company said on Tuesday, as concerns rise over a multi-state outbreak of H5N1 virus in dairy cows and infections of three dairy workers since March.
The funds from the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority will be used to complete late-stage development and testing of a pre-pandemic mRNA-based vaccine against H5N1 avian influenza, the company said in a statement.
The agreement also includes additional options to prepare and accelerate a response to future public health threats, the company said.
In March, U.S. officials reported the first outbreak of the H5N1 virus in dairy cattle, which has since infected more than 130 herds in 12 states.
Scientists are concerned that exposure to the virus in poultry and dairy operations could increase the risk that the virus will mutate and gain the ability to spread easily among people, touching off a pandemic.
Last year, Moderna started a safety and immunogenicity study of its bird flu vaccine called mRNA-1018 in healthy adults aged 18 and older. That study included both the H5 subtype of bird flu that is currently circulating in dairy cattle, as well as the H7 bird flu subtype.
Results of that study are expected this year and will be used to map out late-stage development plans, the company said.
Moderna's vaccine uses mRNA, or messenger RNA, the technology in its COVID-19 shot.
"mRNA vaccine technology offers advantages in efficacy, speed of development and production, scalability, and reliability in addressing infectious disease outbreaks, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic," Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.
Manufacturing of conventional flu vaccines using cell or egg-based technology can take four to six months. U.S. officials have said they were moving bulk vaccine from CSL Seqirus that closely matches the current virus into finished shots that could provide 4.8 million doses if needed.
Those doses would potentially be used to inoculate farm workers and others at risk of exposure to the virus. For the general public, U.S. and global health officials say the risk from bird flu remains low.
FILE PHOTO: A vial and sryinge are seen in front of a displayed Moderna logo in this illustration taken January 11, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
The U.S. government will pay the vaccine maker Moderna $176 million to develop a pandemic vaccine that could be used to treat bird flu in people as cases in dairy cows continue to mount across the country, federal officials announced Tuesday.
The funds are targeted for release through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and will pay for continued development of a vaccine that uses the same mRNA technology that allowed rapid development and rollout of vaccines to protect against COVID-19. The award was made through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a program that focuses on medical treatments for potential pandemics.
WATCH: Senators press Moderna CEO on COVID-19 vaccine price increases
Moderna will launch trials to test the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine that could be used to scale up a response to a bird flu pandemic, if needed.
The H5N1 virus was detected earlier this year in dairy cows and has spread to more than 135 herds in 12 states and infected three people to date, all with mild cases. Federal health officials stress that the risk to the wider population remains low.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Left: FILE PHOTO: A vial and sryinge are seen in front of a displayed Moderna logo in this illustration taken January 11, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
The U.S. government will pay the vaccine maker Moderna $176 million to develop a pandemic vaccine that could be used to treat bird flu in people as cases in dairy cows continue to mount across the country, federal officials announced Tuesday.
The funds are targeted for release through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and will pay for continued development of a vaccine that uses the same mRNA technology that allowed rapid development and rollout of vaccines to protect against COVID-19. The award was made through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a program that focuses on medical treatments for potential pandemics.
Moderna will launch trials to test the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine that could be used to scale up a response to a bird flu pandemic, if needed.
The H5N1 virus was detected earlier this year in dairy cows and has spread to more than 135 herds in 12 states and infected three people to date, all with mild cases. Federal health officials stress that the risk to the wider population remains low.
Mass. doctor on why Boston-based Moderna is developing a bird flu vaccine
Updated: 5:51 PM EDT Jul 2, 2024
30 YEARS AGO, A BOSTON COMPANY WILL GET $170 MILLION TO DEVELOP TO DEVELOP A BIRD FLU VACCINE. MODERNA SAYS IT WILL USE THE SAME MRNA TECHNOLOGY USED TO PRODUCE SHOTS FOR COVID 19. HERE TO TALK ABOUT THIS, DOCTOR SHIRA DORON, THE CHIEF INFECTION CONTROL OFFICER FOR TUFTS MEDICINE HEALTH SYSTEM, WHICH IS WHY YOURE THE PERSON TO ASK THIS OF HEALTH OFFICIALS ARE TRYING TO CONTAIN THIS OUTBREAK. DOCTOR, A BIRD FLU THATS ALREADY INFECTED AT LEAST 130 HERDS OF DAIRY COWS IN 12 STATES. WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE NUMBER OF HUMAN CASES YOU KNOW, WE THINK THAT DAIRY COW INFECTIONS MAY HAVE BEEN GOING ON LONGER THAN WE REALIZED AS FAR BACK AS DECEMBER OR JANUARY, AND YET, THANKFULLY, THERE HAVE BEEN ONLY THREE REPORTED HUMAN INFECTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH THE VIRUS. ALL THREE HAD MILD INFECTION. ALL OF THEM HAD CLOSE CONTACT WITH COWS, AND NONE TRANSMITTED IT TO OTHER HUMANS, INCLUDING THE PEOPLE IN THEIR HOUSEHOLD. NOW WERE PROBABLY MISSING SOME OTHER MILD HUMAN CASES, BUT STILL, THOSE STATISTICS ARE PRETTY REASSURING. THEY ARE SO IT SOUNDS LIKE THE INFECTION RISK AMONG PEOPLE IS LOW. WHY IS THE GOVERNMENT SPENDING MILLIONS NOW TO DEVELOP THIS VACCINE? YOU KNOW, COVID TAUGHT THE WORLD THAT VIRUSES, GENETIC CODE MUTATES AND FLU IS A NOTORIOUS MUTATOR. THE RISK TO PEOPLE WHO DO NOT WORK WITH CATTLE AND POULTRY IS LOW TODAY, BUT MUTATIONS IN THE VIRUSS GENETIC CODE COULD MAKE IT BETTER SUITED TO INFECT PEOPLE TO SPREAD BETWEEN PEOPLE, OR COULD EVEN MAKE IT MORE LETHAL TO PEOPLE. AND THOSE CHANGES WOULD GIVE IT PANDEMIC POTENTIAL THAT IT DOES NOT HAVE TODAY. AND FOR ALL THOSE REASONS, WE NEED TO BE PREPARED WITH VACCINES AND TREATMENTS. SO ARE YOU TRYING TO GET AHEAD OF IT? YEAH. SO WHILE THIS OUTBREAK CONTINUES, SHOULD PEOPLE AVOID CONTACT WITH FARMS AND BIRD FEEDERS JUST TO BE SAFE? WHATS YOUR ADVICE? THE MOST IMPORTANT ADVICE FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC AROUND THIS IS ONE STAY AWAY FROM RAW, UNPASTEURIZED MILK. PASTEURIZATION DOES MAKE THE MILK FROM INFECTED COWS SAFE. AVOID HANDLING SICK OR DEAD ANIMALS IN THE WILD. IF YOU HAVE TO WEAR GLOVES, WASH YOUR HANDS VERY WELL. AFTERWARD. PEOPLE WITH BACKYARD BIRD FEEDERS OR CHICKENS SHOULD PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO HANDWASHING AS WELL. FARM WORKERS SHOULD USE PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT WHEN THEYRE HANDLING OR DEALING WITH ANY ANIMALS KNOWN TO BE PART OF THIS OUTBREAK, LIKE COWS, CHICKENS AND ALPACA. GREAT ADVICE, DOCTOR DORON, AL
Mass. doctor on why Boston-based Moderna is developing a bird flu vaccine
Updated: 5:51 PM EDT Jul 2, 2024
Dr. Shira Doron, the Chief Infection Control Officer for Tufts Medicine health system, explains why the government would want to invest millions in development of a bird flu vaccine for humans.
Dr. Shira Doron, the Chief Infection Control Officer for Tufts Medicine health system, explains why the government would want to invest millions in development of a bird flu vaccine for humans.
