The FDA just approved this year’s Covid vaccines – here’s what you need to know about the shots

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved updated Covid vaccines as cases of coronavirus continue to surge this month across the nation.

The shots made by drugmakers Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Novavax-Sanofi target the most dominant variant in America this summer, known as XFG.

Pfizer says it will be able to “immediately” ship their vaccines, which will be available in pharmacies, hospitals and clinics in “the coming days.”

All of the shots are approved for Americans over the age of 65 and younger people over the age of five with underlying health conditions.

“Our updated Covid-19 vaccines help protect those at high risk of severe disease, and we are proud to help ensure Americans have access to the latest protection against currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 strains this respiratory virus season,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement.

People not at high-risk may still be able to get the vaccine outside of FDA approval if doctors and pharmacists in their states are allowed to do that.

The availability of the COVID vaccine has been in question since President Donald Trump returned to office and appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oversee health systems. The administration has shifted away from universal vaccine recommendations. The duo has also continued to push vaccine skepticism for a host of diseases. Uncertainty about federal policy was a hurdle for Americans heading to some big pharmacies last year. CVS and Walgreens initially withheld vaccines in more than a dozen states before access expanded gradually last fall.

The same confusion isn’t anticipated this year, Stephen Hoge, Moderna’s president, told The Washington Post.

“A lot of the solutions already got put in place,” he explained. “As it stands right now, we believe everybody — most states and certainly any clinicians or pharmacies or others — have already planned to deal with this challenge.”

CVS is slated to administer doses of the approved vaccine within days “to eligible patients in all states as permitted by law,” Amy Thibault, a spokeswoman for CVS, told The New York Times.

But it’s unclear when people should get the vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has yet to make an official recommendation for which Americans should get this year’s vaccines.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately return The Independent’s request for comment on the matter.

What health insurers will cover remains an open question, as well. Most major insurers should continue to pay for vaccines, despite the end of the federal health emergency declaration that required providers to cover the cost, the trade organization America’s Health Insurance Plans told The Times.

“This process will be evidence-based, evaluate multiple sources of data, including but not limited to ACIP, and will be informed by customer needs,” Tina Stow, a spokeswoman for the trade organization AHIP, also told The Post.

The Covid vaccines are safe and effective at preventing serious illness and death, based on research since they were first released. The shots can have side effects such as flu-like symptoms and a sore arm and – in rare cases – heart inflammation, but experts say the benefits outweigh the risks.

“The Covid-19 vaccines available in the U.S. do not cause blood clots. Covid-19 vaccines are not linked to a higher risk of stroke. The benefits of Covid-19 vaccines outweigh the risk of rare heart conditions,” the Mayo Clinic says.

“Also, the risk of heart conditions seems to be higher with Covid-19 infection than with Covid-19 vaccination,” the clinic noted.

Levels of Covid are currently growing or likely growing in nearly every state, federal data shows.