To optimize protection ahead of another pandemic winter, White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said people should consider getting the newly-updated COVID-19 booster before Halloween.
Amy Bagley receives the Moderna coronavirus disease booster vaccine targeting BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron sub variants at Skippack Pharmacy in Schwenksville, Penn., Sept. 8, 2022.To optimize protection ahead of another pandemic winter, White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said Friday people should consider getting the newly-updated COVID-19 booster before Halloween.
Waiting longer, Jha said, increases the chance of getting reinfected -- and ultimately, "it's very hard to time the market," he said. White House COVID coordinator Ashish Jha gets an updated-booster shot alongside Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Sept. 16, at a COVID Center in Washington, D.C.So far, the government has made 30 million vaccines available to states for distribution, out of an overall order of around 170 million vaccines between both companies Pfizer and Moderna.
The newest shot, which targets both the most dominant variant, BA.4/BA.5, and the original COVID strain, carries the potential of being the only shot Americans need this year, similar to an annual flu shot, and offering greater protection against COVID because it matches the virus that's circulating now.
"I feel very confident based on everything we have that for the average-risk person, even an Omicron-like variant is unlikely to lead us to suggest that [young, healthy] people are going to benefit from a second shot within a year," Jha said. "I think that is both unrealistic and not necessary." He pointed to evidence on safety and efficacy about the millions of vaccines that have already been distributed, as well as a clinical trial on bivalent vaccines that targeted BA.1, an earlier omicron subvariant, which vaccine companies later forgoed in favor of the newer strains, BA.4 and BA.5.