COVID-19 vaccinations likely to follow annual flu shot pattern – U.S. officials
franckreporter

Top health officials in the U.S. said Tuesday that COVID-19 immunization would become an annual event similar to the yearly rollout of flu vaccines.
"In the absence of a dramatically different variants, we likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual updated Covid-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population," President Biden's Chief Medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a White House briefing.
As reasons for the argument, Fauci and Biden administration's COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha cited the enhanced protection generated by redesigned COVID boosters which the U.S. regulators cleared last week.
Following FDA authorization, CDC last week recommended immunization with Omicron-adjusted boosters developed by Pfizer (NYSE:PFE)/ BioNTech (BNTX) and Moderna (MRNA) for people aged more than 12 years and those above 18 years, respectively.
The messenger RNA vaccines address both the original strain of the virus and Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which together account for an estimated ~99% of circulating COVID-19 strains.
Fauci and Jha expect similar booster updates going forward to address dominant Omicron subvariants in the future. Fauci added that people with underlying medical conditions might have to get immunized more than once a year.
Meanwhile, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr. Rochelle Walensky, noted that the seven-day average of COVID hospitalizations had dropped 14% to 4,500, and new vaccines could prevent as many as 100,000 hospitalizations and 9,000 deaths per year.
Pharmacy retailers CVS Health (CVS) and Walgreens (WBA) announced the availability of Omicron-adjusted boosters last Friday.