With Covid Rising, FDA Approves New Vaccines – What You Need to Know

As fall approaches, important markers show that Covid activity is on the rise in the U.S.  Increases in hospitalizations, an uptick in deaths and wastewater samples showing higher levels of the virus all point to Covid coming back. 

This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved updated Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.  

Key Points

• The vaccines, which target the omicron variant XBB.1.5, are approved for people 12 and older and under emergency use authorization for children ages 6 months to 11 years old. 
• The FDA says that the vaccine should still provide good protection against COVID even though BA.2.86, not XBB.1.5, is now the most common strain in circulation. 
• The new vaccines are on track to reach Americans in the coming weeks but are not available yet.  
• Patients with Covid seem to be less sick than in past years.  
• Recent studies show that antibodies from previous infections and vaccinations seem to do a good job of neutralizing the current strains commonly seen in the U.S. 

What’s Next

An advisory panel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is scheduled to meet this week to vote on recommendations for using the new shots.  

After the CDC director signs off on their recommendations, the vaccines will be available at pharmacies, health clinics and other vaccine distribution sites.   

The Biden Administration said last month that the new vaccines should be available to the public by mid-September. 

Monitoring the Variants

The Covid virus has been hard to control because of its ability to produce a range of mutations.  Public health experts and scientists have been intensely monitoring new variants with the CDC publishing weekly updates on their spread.  

While that subvariant, XBB.1.5, has already been replaced by others, it’s a close enough match for the new shots to protect people, scientists say. 

The largest share of cases is now from an offshoot known as EG.5 (Eris) that accounts for about 22% of cases across the nation.   

The new vaccine, designed earlier this year to target a different variant, is still expected to produce a strong immune response against newer variants based on trial data. 

“The two strains, EG.5 and XBB.1.5, are not identical, but they’re pretty close,” said Dr. Scott Roberts, a Yale Medicine infectious disease specialist, in an article published in Yale Medicine news, “My strong suspicion is that, given the genetic similarities, there will still be a good degree of protection from the booster.”

A Rise in Covid

Right now, Covid cases and hospitalizations are still lower than the peak the nation saw last year.  

Hospitalizations have been trending upward since the beginning of July — the first increase seen this year, according to data from the CDC. 

Just over 17,400 people were hospitalized with Covid during the week ending Aug 26, up almost 16% from the previous week.  

The good news is that patients with COVID don’t seem to be as sick as they were two years ago. 

According to Dr. Christopher Ohl, a professor of infectious disease at Wake Forest University School of Medicine who also treats patients in the intensive care unit, “What we’re seeing now is our patients who are admitted with Covid pneumonia in the ICU tend to respond faster to treatment, they’re less likely to die and they’re more likely to get discharged earlier.”

The feeling is that the latest omicron subvariants circulating are “are not as nasty” as previous variants, according to Ohl.  

Other factors support better outcomes for COVID patients.  For example, access to the antiviral Paxlovid has also helped keep people out of the hospital. 

 Patients with underlying health conditions seem to be less susceptible to being targeted by Covid than in the beginning of the pandemic. 

Finally, many Americans (95% according to the CDC) have some immunity to the virus, through vaccination, infection, or both. 

Advice from the CDC

As CDC Director Mandy Cohen reminds us, “COVID is here with us. We are going to have to continue to live with it,” Cohen said. “We just need to use the tools that we have to continue to protect ourselves and those that are around us.”

Image by Freepik