The updated booster shots that protect against two omicron variants will be available “in a few short weeks.”
. Jha said he expects that the new boosters should "work much better at preventing infection transmission and serious illness" than the current boosters. The new booster will be identical to the original vaccine, with the addition of proteins from the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.
The companies making the boosters, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, are set to submit their data to the FDA and the CDC by the end of the month. Jha is optimistic that anyone ages 12 and over who wants a booster will have access to one. Previously, boosters rollouts have been limited to the most vulnerable populations due to limited vaccine funding and supply chain backups.
"We're still working on trying to pull more resources from other places. I would like to get to a point where every adult in America who wants a vaccine can get one. I'm hopeful we will be there. We're not quite there yet in terms of how many vaccine doses we've been able to buy," Jha said.for 105 million doses of updated boosters from Pfizer and 66 million doses from Moderna, with an option for millions of more doses down the line.
Along with getting a booster, Jha and other health experts advise eligible kids and adults alike to get the flu vaccine this year, as Australia’s flu season, which often predicts our own, was the worst it has been in five years. "Our health care system is going to get into serious trouble unless we are very proactive about preventing it -- so if we do nothing and just sort of hope for the best, I think we could end up getting into a lot of trouble this fall and winter," Jha said.
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