Episode 164 Addendum: COVID Vaccine Update

Chris Dall: Hello and welcome to the Osterholm update, a podcast on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases with Doctor Michael Osterholm. Doctor Osterholm is an internationally recognized medical detective and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, or CIDRAP, at the University of Minnesota. In this podcast, Doctor Osterholm draws on nearly 50 years of experience investigating infectious disease outbreaks to provide straight talk on the latest infectious disease and public health threats. I'm Chris Dahl, reporter for CIDRAP news, and I'm your host for these conversations. Hello, everyone, and welcome to an Osterholm update addendum. It's Friday, August 23rd, and you usually don't hear from us so quickly after we post the podcast, but we wanted to provide you with some information on the COVID vaccine, since this is an issue that we have discussed a lot in recent episodes. Yesterday, after we posted the podcast, the FDA gave the green light to the updated COVID vaccines. So, Mike, what do our listeners need to know?

Michael Osterholm: Thanks, Chris. I realize this is a bit unusual in terms of our podcast publishing, but we felt that it was very important for you to be updated on this new development with the vaccine availability. This really allows us to skip over the discussion about how to find a dose of the older vaccine and get us right to the new, updated vaccines. As Chris noted yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration announced approval of the updated 2024-25 monovalent or single-strain mRNA vaccines. Remember, there are two different vaccines. The updated Pfizer vaccine. The 2024-2025 vaccine actually is available for those who are 12 years of age and older, whereas the Moderna COVID vaccine is now available for those six months through 11 years, as well as those 12 and older. And so at this point, I would urge you to try to get a dose of the new vaccine. I have had further discussions in the last day. They are beginning to ship the vaccine. Yet this week there's a remote chance that some pharmacies, particularly the larger chains, may have the vaccine available this weekend. August 24^th-25th. However, we feel quite certain that they will have many more doses available throughout the next week. Again, there will be a problem, I think, trying to get a date and time for the administration of the dose, because I'm sure there will be many who will want to get that right away. But again, I urge you to get vaccinated with this new dose. In addition, we are going to link to you a story that was published yesterday afternoon on the CIDRAP website and CIDRAP news, which actually discusses this issue further and really goes through the recommendations that have been made already about how to use these doses.

Michael Osterholm: So this is in fact the Flirt variant vaccine dose that we've all wanted. And also I want to remind you, however, if you listen to the podcast from August 22nd, you'll note that in fact, there is now only a two-month window that's needed between a previous dose of vaccine and getting the new doses. So if you did get vaccinated with the old XBB vaccine, I just want to make sure you're aware that you can get this new dose two months after your previous vaccination, so I hope this is helpful. We wanted to make sure you were aware of it. Start searching now for the new vaccines, the 2024-2025 formula, and you'll obviously be in the best shape you possibly can be in from a vaccine immunity standpoint. And for those of you who are looking for the Novavax vaccine, for whatever reason, we still don't know when that will be available. So as I pointed out several months ago, originally we were told it would be available by mid-July. That didn't happen. Then we were told that it might be released at the same time as the new mRNA doses. That hasn't happened, so I'm not sure when we're going to see the Novavax vaccine appear. I hope this was helpful. Thanks.

Chris Dall: Thanks for listening to the latest episode of the Osterholm update. If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to keep up with the latest infectious disease news by visiting our website CIDRAP.umn.edu. This podcast is supported in part by you, our listeners. If you would like to donate, please go to CIDRAP.Umn.Edu/support. The Osterholm Update is produced by Sydney Reopening and Elise Holmes. Our researchers are Cory Anderson, Angela Ulrich, Meredith Arpey, Claire Stoddard and Leah Moat.