43fab - 2y
2/ Federal health officials are also phasing out the original #[0] formulas created by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, revoking their authorizations in the United States. And instead of needing an initial series of two shots, unvaccinated people will now require just a single dose of the reformulated, or “bivalent,” Covid shot to be considered vaccinated.
3/ Limited data on the reformulated vaccines indicate that in older adults, the shots offer additional protection against severe disease and death from Covid, although the protection wanes rapidly in the weeks after inoculation.
4/ For most Americans, FDA plans to encourage annual Covid shots in the fall, much as it does with flu shots. Health officials will decide on the exact composition of the shot in June, based on the version of the virus circulating at the time. The bivalent vaccine targets the original variant of the coronavirus as well as variants BA.4 and BA.5, which were dominant last summer. But BA.4 and BA.5 were quickly supplanted by newer versions.
5/ “The most recent Omicron subvariant, XBB.1.5, now accounts for about 78% of cases in US, & another version, XBB.1.6, for about 7%. So far, the reformulated vaccines seem to prevent severe illness and hospitalization after infection with these variants”
