FDA’s vaccines chief sees possibility of more Covid boosters to iprove protection

FDA’s vaccines chief sees possibility of more Covid boosters — sooner than he’d like The FDA’s vaccines chief sees the possibility of more Covid boosters for some people before next fall. Helen Branswell STAT

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The messenger RNA vaccines most commonly used in the United States — the products made by Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech partnership — can easily be tweaked to update the strains of the virus they target. The speed with which these vaccines can be adapted and produced has revolutionized pandemic response.

But the vaccines as currently designed do not offer long-term protection against infection. Severe disease, hospitalization, and death, yes. But the duration of protection against contracting Covid is short-lived — which could lead to a vaccination cadence that is impractical to try to maintain.

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