COVID-19 vaccines to become annual shot, say White House officials

Editor's Note

On Tuesday, White House officials said COVID-19 vaccinations will likely become an annual affair, similar to flu shots, NBC News September 6 reports.

"In the absence of a dramatically different variants, we likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual updated Covid-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population," said Dr Anthony Fauci.

As recently reported in OR Manager, the updated booster shots will target both the original coronavirus strain and the current omicron subvariant BA.4 and BA.5. According to White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator, Ashish Jha, the trial data suggests that the shot will better protect against infection and transmission unless a new variant emerges.

“Barring those variant curveballs, 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 against serious illness all year,” he added.

Although the virus has made small changes as it acquires new mutations, its fundamental behavior has remained the same, leading disease experts optimistic that annual shots may be sufficient to protect against future versions of the virus.