It looks like a new Covid-19 vaccine – one that specifically targets the highly-contagious Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants – may be available sometime in September. Pfizer has submitted information on its new booster to the FDA.
“The hope is that it’s going to give us broader and deeper protection than any of the previous vaccines we’ve had,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, an expert on infectious diseases at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “The thinking is that this will likely give us good protection against not just hospitalization and death, but also against getting infected for a short while.”
But if it’s anything like the previous vaccines, Dr. Swartzberg said, it may not give us long-term protection against mild-to-moderate infection.
Even so, if the new booster is approved, it will provide an extra layer of protection as we head into the fall and winter months.
“And given the experience in the last two years, we know that the later fall and winter are particularly treacherous times for us, so it should give us an edge this year,” Dr. Swartzberg told me.
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