COVID boosters for under 50s on ice in bid to accelerate reformulated vaccines – WaPo

Authorizing booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines for those under the age of 50 is unlikely as the Biden administration is trying to move up a campaign to provide reformulated vaccines engineered to fight Omicron subvariants, The Washington Post reported.

The newspaper said administration officials want to have the new vaccines available for use as early as the beginning of September as opposed to later in the fall.

If earlier delivery of rejiggered vaccines can happen, it is unlikely boosters of the current version of COVID vaccines would be made unavailable for those under 50. The administration is still waiting to hear back from vaccine makers on this, which is expected in the coming days.

Vaccine makers: Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA), Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX), and Novavax (NASDAQ:NVAX).

In late June, the U.S. FDA advised vaccine makers to update their COVID shots to include an Omicron component. Two Omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, have been responsible for the majority of cases in the U.S. in recent months.

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