Federal health officials announced on Tuesday, September 6, that Americans may need to get a single COVID-19 vaccination every year, making it clear that the United States will be living with the deadly coronavirus for the foreseeable future, according to CNN.
Dr. Ashish Jha, leading the COVID-19 Response Team of the White House, said that this week marks an important shift in their fight against the virus. He added that it marks their ability to make COVID vaccines a more routine part of their lives as they continue to drive down serious illnesses and deaths and protect American citizens heading into the winter and fall seasons.
Though the announcement on Tuesday is not a complete surprise, as the Biden administration has been hinting at such a shift since last spring, it is still a significant moment as the federal government continues to de-escalate its response to the COVID pandemic.
Boosters would still be free of charge for now
According to Jha, the newly authorized updated COVID-19 booster shots would be free of charge to all Americans who qualify and want them. However, future jabs and treatments may no longer be free as funding for the COVID pandemic response dwindles, and the government will soon be shifting therapeutics to the commercial market.
Vaccine experts said that the shift to yearly COVID shots signals that the coronavirus is not going away. Dr. Gregory Poland, who directs the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, said their great-great-grandchildren would be getting coronavirus vaccines. He added that when they get their flu vaccine this fall, one of the components they will get is derived from the 1918 pandemic influenza virus, and 100-plus years later, they are still immunizing against it.
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, posted a message on Twitter, saying that it could be the right time to move to annual boosters if they could answer some key questions, like how well do the updated COVID shots work?
The problem with COVID vaccines is that Americans are not getting them
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Tuesday that although he expects annual shots for Covid-19 to begin this fall, people with weakened immune systems might need more frequent protection against the virus.
He said that in the absence of a dramatically different variant, they are likely moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to the annual flu vaccine, with updated COVID shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population.
Fauci added that the latest booster shots should continue to protect Americans as long as COVID-19 changes incrementally, with the virus drifting away from the currently circulating BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.
Dr. Robert Wachter, who chairs the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, said that the biggest problem with the COVID vaccines today is that people are not getting them. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that only 1 in 3 Americans ages five and up have had a booster shot.
