US president Joe Biden on Tuesday announced that the country is likely to start recommending Covid-19 vaccines annually as his administration urged the American citizens to seek out newly authorized booster shots tailored to fight the new coronavirus variants.
“As the virus continues to change, we will now be able to update our vaccines annually to target the dominant variant,” Biden said in a statement. He further added that, "just like your annual flu shot, you should get it sometime between Labor Day and Halloween.”
This comes after the US health officials held a briefing as regulators cleared the new generation of coronavirus inoculations and called on people aged 12 years and older to get another dose of the vaccine if they have not yet.
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White House Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha during the briefing said that for "a large majority of Americans, we are moving to a point where a single annual Covid shot should provide a high degree of protection against serious illness all year. That's an important milestone."
Meanwhile, top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci cautioned that a sharp change in the virus could alter the interval at which doses are deployed.
{{/usCountry}}Meanwhile, top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci cautioned that a sharp change in the virus could alter the interval at which doses are deployed.
{{/usCountry}}“If a wild card variant comes in, all bets are off,” Fauci said.
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The United States so far has recorded a total of 94,880,701 cases of the coronavirus and 1,048,134 deaths, according to the data by John Hopkins. The world has recorded around 606,094,157 cases of the virus so far.
(With inputs from Bloomberg, Reuters)