The Biden administration has agreed to purchase millions of updated COVID-19 shots that target the highly transmissible omicron variant and expects the rollout to begin in the fall in hopes of being prepared for a winter surge.
The Department of Health and Human Services said on Friday that the administration has agreed to purchase 66 million doses of Moderna’s bivalent COVID-19 vaccine — on top of the 105 million Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent shots purchased in June. The plan is to have shots ready to go in the event that federal regulators give the green light.
The vaccine formulas, which have remained unchanged since they were first rolled out in December 2020, will better target the omicron offshoots BA.5 and BA.4. BA.5 quickly became the dominant strain circulating in the United States this summer. It accounts for more than 81% of cases, up from 67% just three weeks ago. It has also proven able to reinfect people who have previously gained immunity through infection or vaccination.
HHS is still encouraging holdouts to get vaccinated and for those eligible to get booster shots. Only adults over 50 and people with compromised immune systems as young as 12 are able to get a second booster. Tallies show that cases have remained relatively unchanged over the past two weeks, with a daily average of about 126,000 confirmed cases, but past years of the pandemic have proven that surges during the colder months can be expected.“We must stay vigilant in our fight against COVID-19 and continue to expand Americans’ access to the best vaccines and treatments,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said.
The daily case rate is an undercount of infections. The wide accessibility of rapid at-home diagnostic tests has made viral surveillance more difficult than the period of time in which people’s only option was to get a PCR test from their local health departments. The U.S. has reported nearly 91 million infections since the pandemic began in early 2020. Hospitalizations continue to increase, as they have for much of the summer, but they remain far below the peaks reached in past waves.