Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers should include the newer forms of the omicron coronavirus variant in booster shots this fall, the Food and Drug Administration recommended today.
The agency said it wants vaccine manufacturers to create booster shots that include two forms of the virus — the original strain, which is what’s in current vaccines, and the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant. Those lineages have taken over as the most common form of the virus circulating in the United States. They’re highly contagious and are even better at evading the immune system than some previous versions of the virus.
Vaccine manufacturers Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax have already been testing omicron-targeted versions of their vaccines, which…
