While COVID-19 cases currently are low, more surges are inevitable and manufacturers need time to brew shots for fall.
But just a few months later, numerous offshoots of JN.1 already are on the rise, prompting
That made for a tough choice as the
“If this evolves further in the fall, will we regret not having been a little bit closer?” Marks said, likening the choice to how he always picks the “freshest” milk with the longest expiration date in the grocery store.
But KP.2 isn't likely to still be the biggest threat by fall, the panel responded. Having to make the choice now, they preferred the parent JN.1 variant itself rather than trying to predict which of its descendants was most likely to increase in the coming months.
“Having a vaccine that’s the trunk of the tree rather than the branches makes sense to me,” because it would offer some cross-protection to other subvariants that emerge, said one adviser, Dr.
Health officials have told Americans to expect a yearly update to COVID-19 vaccines, just like they get a new flu shot each fall designed to match as best as possible the currently spreading strains. Even though just about everyone has either been infected or had at least one round of COVID-19 vaccinations, the coronavirus keeps churning out new varieties that can dodge prior immunity -– and protection also wanes over time.
Last fall’s COVID-19 vaccine targeted a completely different section of the coronavirus family tree, and
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