Published on 21 Mar 2023 on Benzinga via Yahoo Finance

Additional COVID-19 Booster Shots? Officials Anticipate FDA Authorization Within Few Weeks

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reportedly moving toward authorizing a second round of omicron-targeted COVID-19 booster shots for the elderly and other people at high risk.FDA officials could decide within a few weeks and could change their mind, Wall Street Journal reported citing the people close to the matter.The deliberations come as some people especially vulnerable to infection have asked their doctors to give them a second round of the updated booster, even though the FDA hasn’t approved it.Some infectious-disease experts have called on federal health officials to permit another booster shot to safeguard people with comparatively weaker immune defenses better, as the U.K. and Canada have done.According to data from the CDC, people who get the shots are one-fourteenth as likely to die than unvaccinated people who didn’t get the updated shot.Yet less than 17% of the total population have taken a second booster, compared with 69% who got the primary series, according to the CDC. About 40% of people 65 years and older have received the updated, dual-target shot below earlier levels.In August, the FDA approved the bivalent COVID boosters targeting the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants from Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE)/BioNTech SE (NASDAQ: BNTX) and Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA), along with the original strain.Photo by Johaehn from Pixabay