According to two sources familiar with the matter, the US Food and Drug Administration is poised to sign off on updated COVID-19 vaccines targeting more recently circulating strains of the virus as soon as this week, as the country experiences its largest summer wave in two years.
The sources, who declined to be named because the timing information isn’t public, said the agency is expected to greenlight updated mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech that target a strain of the virus called KP.2.
It was unclear whether the agency simultaneously would authorize Novavax’s updated shot, which targets the JN.1 strain. The move would be several weeks ahead of last year’s version of the vaccine, which got FDA signoff on September 11.
“Now is the time to get a dose with this surge,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN.
Osterholm said on his podcast last week that he recently got a dose of last season’s vaccine in order to increase his immunity while the virus is circulating at such high levels and amid uncertainty around when new shots would become available.
He added that he’ll now wait to get the updated one in four months, the interval recommended by health officials.
In June, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that everyone over 6 months old receive both an updated Covid-19 vaccine and a flu shot this year.
Representatives for Pfizer and Moderna told CNN that the companies had ample supply of their updated Covid vaccines and would be ready to ship doses upon approval. Moderna’s spokesman said it expects the vaccine to be available in stores within days of FDA signoff.
Novavax’s vaccine is based on protein technology, which takes longer to manufacture than mRNA vaccines. The company’s executives told investors on a conference call last week that it anticipated that its updated vaccine would be arriving in warehouses this month and that it’s expected to be ready for distribution when authorized. A spokesperson for Novavax didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
