The latest Omicron variants can run, but they can’t hide. That’s the word from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which yesterday authorized the release of two new COVID-19 booster shots that will target not just the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, but also the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants. The bivalent shots will be available as early as later this month—pending final recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is meeting today to decide exactly how and when to administer the boosters.
The new boosters are produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which developed new shots that now include their original mRNA vaccines and genetic targets for the BA.4 and BA.5 strains. Pfizer-BioNTech’s booster is authorized for people aged 12 and up, while Moderna’s is authorized for people 18 and older. Pfizer-BioNTech plans to ask for similar approval for the bivalent boosters for 5- to 11-year olds in early October. The Biden Administration has already purchased 170 million doses of the new vaccines for a fall vaccination campaign, though delivery could lag a bit, with Pfizer, for example, hoping to begin delivering just 15 million of those doses by Sept. 9.
The move by the FDA—and the expected but not guaranteed approval by the CDC—is seen as a welcome step as autumn closes in and the country faces the cold and flu season. But not everyone is completely sold on the efficacy of the shots. For one thing, they were rushed into development. As my colleague Alice Park reports, it was only in June that an FDA panel of independent experts met and recommended new bivalent boosters be developed in time for a fall vaccination campaign. That meant hitting the ground running—which in turn meant testing the new shots only in animals, with later tests in humans to follow only after the boosters are already being administered. That kind of approach is not unusual: flu vaccines, which similarly are re-designed each year to be strain specific, are developed using animal models. Still, not everyone is sold.
“You’re asking people to get a new product for which there’s no data,” Dr. Paul Offit, head of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told CNN. “Mice data are not adequate.”
But others disagree. In a separate CNN interview, FDA commissioner Dr. Robert Cardiff said, “I will be at the front of the line getting my vaccination. I’m very confident about this.”
Still, questions remain about whether the public will step forward for yet another round of shots. Only half of all eligible Americans received the first booster dose when it was initially recommended, and only a third of people 50 and older, who were urged to get a second booster, did so. One way to encourage compliance will be to reframe periodic, reformulated boosters as simply a part of living in the era of COVID-19, much the way people view flu vaccines or, argued University of Pennsylvania immunologist E. John Wherry, the way someone would naturally get a tetanus booster after stepping on a rusty nail.
“We need to rebrand it in a societally normal-looking way,” Wherry told the Associated Press. “Give a clear, forward looking set of expectations.”
One thing is certain: SARS-CoV-2 will continue to be a moving target, with the virus doing what viruses do—which is to say it will continue evolving and changing, spinning off new variants in its effort to maximize its spread. Vaccines targeted to those new variants are a powerful tool to keep the pandemic in check.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
More than 603 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1:00 am. E.T. today, and nearly 6.5 million people have died. On Aug. 31, there were 791,267 new cases and 4,000 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending, in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 10 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded over 94.5 million million coronavirus cases as of 1:00 am. E.T. today. Nearly 1.05 million people have died. On Aug. 31, there were 153,567 new cases reported in the U.S., and 1,518 deaths were confirmed.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Aug. 31. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
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WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
China has imposed a new COVID-19 lockdown in the inland city of Chengdu, ordering its 21 million residents to stay home after 700 locally transmitted cases were detected last week, reports the Associated Press. Just one person from each household is allowed to venture outside—and only to buy groceries—until the restrictions are lifted. The government also canceled an ongoing automotive fair and postponed the start of the school term. Chengdu joins a handful of other cities, including Shenzen, Guanzhou, and Dalian, in facing new restrictions as new cases of the Omicron variant surface. Overall, there were 1,875 Omicron cases reported throughout China yesterday.
Student test scores in math and reading have plummeted to the lowest level in more than 30 years, according to national test results released this morning, and COVID-19 remote learning is to blame, reports the New York Times. The nationwide test, administered annually to a sample group of 9-year olds, found that students in the 90th percentile lost three points in math compared to scores in 2020, before the pandemic began. Those in the bottom 10th percentile lost 12 points. There were racial differences as well, with Black students losing 13 points compared to five points among white students—widening a pre-existing racial gap. Catching up to pre-2020 levels, the test administrators estimate, will require three weeks of extra schooling for every point lost on the test.
Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped in 2021 for the second year in a row, marking the first such back-to-back losses in a century, with COVID-19 determined to be the cause. In 2019, life expectancy for a person born in the U.S. was 79 years. In 2020, that figure fell to 77 years due to COVID-19, and dropped again to 76.1 years in 2021. Not all groups in the U.S. have suffered life expectancy losses equally. Native Americans—who are 2.2 times more likely to die from COVID-19 and 3.2 times more likely to be hospitalized than the nationwide average—were the hardest hit, seeing a stark life expectancy loss of 6.6 years from 2019 to 2021.
At a media briefing yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that COVID-19 cases and deaths are falling worldwide, reports ABC News. In what WHO officials termed a “welcome decline,” there were 4.5 million COVID-19 cases reported last week, a 16% decline from the week before. Deaths fell too, with the 13,500 lives lost representing a week-over-week decline of 13%. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus counseled against complacency, warning that the approach of winter and the possible emergence of new variants could see numbers climb once again.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Angela Haupt.
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