FDA approves first Omicron boosters

What happened

Americans who have received two primary vaccine doses could begin getting new booster shots soon past Labor Day, after the Food and Drug Administration this week authorized the first Covid vaccines reformulated for Omicron. Pfizer and Moderna have both created versions of a bivalent vaccine containing genetic material from the original Covid strain and two Omicron subvariants, BA.4 and the dominant BA.5. Pfizer’s booster has been approved for everyone over 12, while Moderna’s is cleared for adults. The federal government has already ordered 171 million doses of what is expected to be the last free Covid booster. Last month, the government ceased sending free Covid tests to households, due to lack of funding.

While the Omicron boosters have only been tested on mice, fears that the virus could mutate again before human trials are complete have prompted the pharmaceutical companies to pursue authorization now. Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s Covid response coordinator, expressed confidence that the new boosters would improve on the original vaccines “in terms of their ability to prevent infection, transmission, and serious illness and death.” So far, two-thirds of the U.S. population have had two vaccine doses, but only about one-third have received a booster shot, and just 31 percent of children ages 5 to 11 have gotten an initial vaccination. Covid stubbornly remains a factor in American life: Every day, there are more than 90,000 reported new cases in the U.S., and nearly 500 deaths.

What the columnists said

The boosters “promise to be a life raft in dangerous seas,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. It’s a trade-off: Use vaccines only tested on mice but available while the dominant variant is still BA.5, or risk ending up with a booster “well behind the curve if the virus mutates.” While scientists pursue the goal of a pan-coronavirus vaccine that will endure through future variants, “a booster that is currently relevant, with less clinical trial data, seems reasonable.” Mice studies have worked for the flu vaccine, so “this is a gamble that the past is prologue.”

It’s not clear the gamble promises much of a payoff, said Faye Flam in Bloomberg. “There’s almost no public data on the efficacy of the boosters.” Still, it’s “unlikely to pose any new health threats,” and if it reminds vaccinated people to get boosted, “maybe that’s an upside.” But most of the people hospitalized and dying are unvaccinated, and this booster does nothing for Americans who never got the original shots. “They are, inexplicably, not eligible for it.”

Unfortunately, none of this matters if Americans keep “greeting the coronavirus with little more than a shrug,” said Katherine Wu in The Atlantic. Boosters only work if people get them. Mask mandates are gone, as is emergency funding. As fall approaches, “calls for staying up-to-date on vaccines are one of the last nationwide measures left—which puts a lot of pressure on shot induced immunity to combat the virus, all on its own.”