Annual Covid Booster? Vaccination May Soon Resemble Flu Shot Approach, White House Says

Topline

The U.S. will likely shift to offering Covid-19 booster vaccines on a yearly basis like flu shots, White House officials said Tuesday, as the administration begins to roll out a new booster shot specifically targeting the highly transmissible omicron variant.

A nurse gets ready to administer the Pfizer booster shot.

Newsday via Getty Images

Key Facts

The U.S. is “moving towards a path” of vaccinating against Covid at a “cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine,” with retooled shots each year engineered to protect against the most prevalent coronavirus strain at that time, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said during a press conference Tuesday.

Health officials also said Tuesday updated booster shots—bivalent vaccines that protect against both the original coronavirus strain and omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5—likely will provide better protection against infection than the original Covid vaccine.

Those who are at high risk for severe illness may need to get vaccinated more than once a year, according to Fauci.

But for the first time since December 2020, vaccines have “caught up with the virus,” White House coronavirus coordinator Ashish Jha said during the press conference.

Crucial Quote

“Barring any new variant curveball … for a large majority of Americans, we are moving to a point where a single annual Covid shot should provide a high degree of protection all year,” Jha said.

Surprising Fact

Only half of those who received primary series Covid vaccines have gotten a booster shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Contra

Some experts have cautioned that repeated booster shots are not an effective or practical way to tackle the pandemic, with some suggesting a universal Covid vaccine could be a better alternative. Efforts are underway to try to create such a shot.

Key Background

The Centers for Disease Control approved updated Covid booster shots last week, making them available to all Americans 12 and older this week. Omicron subvariant BA.5 makes up 88% of all Covid cases in the U.S., according to the CDC, and is better at evading antibodies from previous infections and vaccinations than earlier Covid strains. Officials have rolled out the new boosters in an attempt to give Americans better protection against the prevailing Covid strain and to avoid another winter surge of coronavirus infections, after a spike last winter caused record numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. While Covid cases started to rise again this summer, infections have begun to fall slightly in recent weeks. The CDC recommends that anyone 12 years and older get the new booster at least two months after their last Covid shot. Jha on Tuesday encouraged people to “stay up to date on their vaccines,” arguing the shots and Covid treatments can “make deaths from this virus vanishingly rare.”