CDC Director Mandy Cohen urges people to get new COVID-19 booster when it becomes available in September

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen is urging people to get the new COVID-19 vaccine booster when it becomes available and says it is expected to be effective against the predominant strains circulating now.

Cohen made the remarks in a briefing with reporters on Thursday, the week after the CDC flagged a new, highly mutated strain of COVID-19 that infectious disease experts are monitoring closely. The concern is that the new strain, labeled BA.2.86, will be able to evade immunity from the new vaccine.

Cohen emphasized that the number of cases of BA.2.86 remains very low, likely below 1% of infections, and that the new COVID-19 vaccine, which she said should be available in mid-September, targets the strains of the virus most commonly circulating in the United States now.

“That is good news,” she said.

More:A highly mutated COVID-19 strain has infectious disease experts worried. It’s not been found in Wisconsin – yet.

The new vaccine was formulated to target the strain of COVID-19 that dominated infections for much of 2023, one from the XBB lineage.

Wastewater testing shows that the predominant strains of COVID-19 in Wisconsin last month were the XBB lineage, according to the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene.

It’s too soon to know how much protection the new vaccine will offer against the new BA.2.86 variant. Cohen said that early indications are that the vaccine will have some effectiveness in preventing severe illness from the new variant, but that is something scientists are still studying.

A CDC subcommittee plans to meet on Sept. 12 to consider recommending the newly reformulated COVID-19 vaccine booster.

“We need to understand that both our immunity decreases over time and the virus changes, which is why we need to make sure we are keeping up to date on our COVID vaccinations,” Cohen said.

Cohen said she expects that a COVID-19 booster will become an annual shot, similar to the annual flu shot.

She encourage most people to wait until the new vaccine becomes available to get another COVID-19 shot. However, if a person is severely immunocompromised or at high risk for severe illness from COVID-19, she encouraged them to talk with their doctor about possibly getting another shot beforehand.

Cohen also told reporters that people who are uninsured will be able to get the new vaccine in September through a federal program designed to maintain access to free vaccines for the uninsured into 2024.