Pfizer, Moderna to deliver 175M updated COVID shots for September rollout in U.S.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Pfizer, Moderna to deliver 175M updated COVID shots for September rollout

The U.S. government has completed plans to implement a fall booster campaign in September that will deliver 175M doses of updated COVID-19 vaccines to states, pharmacies, and other vaccination sites.

 

The Biden administration is purchasing the redesigned COVID-19 shots from vaccine makers who received guidance from the FDA in June to update their vaccines to protect against the latest subvariants of Omicron and the original COVID strain.

 

Over the past few weeks, messenger-RNA-based vaccine makers Pfizer (NYSE:PFE)/ BioNTech (BNTX) and their rival Moderna (MRNA) announced new agreements to deliver 105M and 66M doses of updated COVID-19 vaccine doses to the government, respectively.

 

(more)

 

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3875878-pfizer-moderna-to-deliver-175m-doses-of-updated-covid-shots-for-september-rollout

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

U.S. CDC recommends Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents

The CDC on Monday recommended Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine for use in adolescents aged 12 to 17 years.

...

The two-dose, protein-based vaccine differs from the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna messenger RNA vaccines, which are available for children as young as age 6 months.

 

Experts have said that the availability of a non-mRNA vaccine could help reduce COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

...

The FDA granted an EUA for the vaccine in adults last month.

 

(more)

 

https://www.healio.com/news/pediatrics/20220822/cdc-recommends-novavaxs-covid19-vaccine-for-adolescents

 

[jayboy]

"The new bivalent jab targets both the original strain of the virus and its Omicron variant. The manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna have had vaccines approved by the medicines regulator and the NHS will use both."

 

According to The Times (see above) the new booster will be available to initially vulnerable target groups in the next couple of months most of whom have already had four jabs.

 

When will the new bivalent jab be available in Thailand? Most hospitals still have large stocks of the old Moderna vaccine.Will they want to run down these stocks first?

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

7 hours ago, jayboy said:

When will the new bivalent jab be available in Thailand? Most hospitals still have large stocks of the old Moderna vaccine.Will they want to run down these stocks first?

 

I haven't seen peepers about when and how (government provided free or only paid via privates) the new Omicron focused vaccines are likely to be available in Thailand... Been watching...waiting.

 

I have seen several large private hospitals in BKK lately advertising reduced price promotions on the original Moderna vaccine. Dunno if that's because their stocks are heading toward their expiration dates and/or because they're preparing for the next round with the newer vaccines.

 

[TorquayFan]

In my 'Inbox' today . . . ""In the coming days, people in the United States and the United Kingdom will be among the first to receive a new breed of COVID-19 vaccine. The hope was that these updated vaccines — based on Omicron variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus — would offer substantially greater protection than older vaccines based on the strain of the virus that emerged in 2019. But an analysis1 suggests that updated boosters offer much the same level of protection as an extra dose of the older vaccines does — particularly when it comes to keeping people out of hospital. The study was posted to the medRxiv preprint server on 26 August and has not been peer reviewed.

“This is not some kind of super-shield against infection compared to what you could have got two weeks ago or a month ago,” says John Moore, a vaccine scientist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City who was not involved in the modelling study. US and UK regulators should have taken the potential effectiveness of updated vaccines into account before authorizing them, Moore argues.""

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02806-5?

Noting that this report has not been 'peer reviewed', nevertheless, IMHO a massive opportunity still exists for a more 'Universal' Covid vaccine.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

In reading the pre-print analysis that the above Nature article is based on, the Nature article appears to be somewhat underselling what the Australian analysis actually says about the new 2nd generation vaccines....

 

The Australian analysis found a 1.5 times increase in neutralizing titres in the new vaccines vs the old vaccines against the newer virus variants.

 

"Considering only neutralisation of
SARS-CoV-2 variant strains, we found that variant-modified vaccines on average produced 1.51-fold higher titres than the equivalent ancestral-based vaccine."

 

In other words, they found the original vaccines post injection resulted in an 11 fold increase in neutralizing titres, vs a 16.6 fold increase with the newer vaccines.

 

"Synthesis of the currently available data
suggest that variant-modified booster vaccination can provide significantly higher (1.5-fold) neutralisation titres to a diversity of current and historic SARS-CoV-2 variants compared to
ancestral-based boosters. This is predicted to provide up to a maximum of a 9.7 percentage increase in protection [against symptomatic infection] (dependent on the pre-boost level of population protection)."

 

In short, they're saying that the advantage of the newer vaccines over the original ones in preventing symptomatic infection or serious COVID disease is greater in populations with less pre-existing immunity from prior infections or vaccinations, and less in populations with greater pre-existing immunity.

 

In one example they gave, they said if the newer boosters were used in a population with 50% pre-existing immunity, the overall protection against symptomatic infection would rise to 90.2% with the new vaccines vs. 85.6% with the original vaccines.