Healthy returns: what we know about the next round of Covid vaccines

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Good afternoon! It’s almost that time of year again.

A new round of Covid vaccines will likely reach Americans in the coming months. Here’s what we know so far about the newest vaccines.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday advised vaccine makers to develop monovalent Covid vaccines targeting a highly contagious strain of the virus called JN.1 for use in the United States starting this fall.

The Omicron JN.1 variant first appeared in the United States last summer and became the dominant circulating strain by January. But the strain accounted for only about 3% of all new cases in the United States on Saturday, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Several derivatives of JN.1.11.1, a direct descendant of JN.1, have since become the major strains circulating in the United States, including KP.3, KP.2, and KP.1.1, also known as FLiRT variants . .

KP.3 accounted for a quarter of all new cases in the United States as of June 8, while KP.2 accounted for 22.5% of cases, according to CDC data.

Federal health officials have long told Americans to expect annual updates to Covid shots because the virus produces new strains that can evade the immunity people have from vaccinations or infections previous – a protection which also diminishes with time. This is similar to how the United States rolls out new flu vaccines every year.

Here’s what the three Covid vaccine makers have said so far.

• Pfizer has filed for FDA approval of an updated messenger RNA Covid vaccine targeting JN.1, aiming to make the vaccine available for the fall season pending a recommendation from the CDC, a said spokesperson.
• Moderna has filed for FDA approval of its own updated mRNA shot targeting JN.1, according to a release. The company said manufacturing is underway and doses of the new vaccine will be ready to ship to the United States as early as August.
• Novavax expects to be ready to deliver a protein-based Covid vaccine targeting JN.1 to the United States in September, pending clearance from the FDA and CDC, the company said in a statement.

The companies each presented data last week showing that a JN.1 Covid vaccine is expected to produce higher levels of protective antibodies against circulating variants of the virus compared to their currently approved vaccines on the market targeting another variant omicron called XBB.1.5. This strain is no longer in circulation.

Once the FDA approves their respective vaccines, the vaccines will require recommendations from a CDC advisory group and the agency itself before they can be rolled out to Americans. The CDC advisory committee is expected to meet at the end of the month to vote on who should receive the new round of vaccines this fall.

The bigger question is how many people will actually roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated later this year?

According to CDC data through early May, only about 22.5% of U.S. adults received the latest round of vaccines rolled out last fall.

Many Americans who received previous rounds of Covid vaccines cited a lack of concern about the virus as the reason they did not receive the latest booster shot, according to a November survey from the research organization KFF health policies. Others said they had been too busy to get vaccinated, the survey found.

Covid cases in the United States have fallen from their peak at the start of the pandemic, but appear to be gradually increasing. The weekly test positivity rate in the United States was 4.5% as of June 1, compared to 4.1% the week before and 3.4% the week before that, according to CDC data.

We will continue to monitor the new round of Covid vaccines as we move closer to fall.

Feel free to send tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.

The White House announced Monday that Microsoft and Google have agreed to provide free and low-cost cybersecurity resources to rural hospitals across the United States, as the healthcare industry works to fend off a growing number of attackers.

Cyberattacks against the healthcare system increased by 128% between 2022 and 2023, according to a statement, and the number of major security breaches in the sector reached a record last year. The attacks have shown no signs of stopping as major healthcare systems and businesses have been plagued by breaches in recent months.

For example, Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, suffered a debilitating cyberattack in February that prevented thousands of doctors from filling their prescriptions, verifying their benefits or getting paid for their services. The White House said the breach was “one of the most significant healthcare-related cyberattacks to date.”

Maintaining cybersecurity infrastructure is complex and costly, and breaches often require “manual, labor-intensive solutions” that can be particularly difficult for small, rural hospitals, the White House said. As a result, the Biden administration has called on technology companies such as Microsoft and Google to offer additional support.

Microsoft said it will offer rural emergency and critical access hospitals up to 75% off its security products geared toward small organizations, according to a release. The company announced that it will offer its “most advanced” security suite free for one year to select large rural hospitals, and that participating rural hospitals will also be able to receive free Windows 10 security updates.

Rural hospitals can access free cybersecurity assessments and training through Microsoft and its partners to help them identify risks and gaps within systems, the company said.

Google said it will provide free “endpoint security consulting” to rural hospitals and nonprofits, meaning the company will help organizations make devices such as their laptops and desktops more difficult to attack.

Taylor Lehmann, director of the Office of the Chief Information Security Officer at Google Cloud, said Google also helps organizations get set up with platforms like Google Workspace and systems like Chrome and ChromeOS with cloud computing capabilities. integrated security. funding to help organizations make the change, Lehmann added.

“The belief that this problem is just going to go away, or that the bad guys just have bigger targets (is) not correct,” he told CNBC in an interview. “Hope is not a strategy, especially when the market for attackers is so blind.”

Lehmann said Google is also running a pilot program with a handful of rural hospitals to develop a set of free or low-cost tools that it could offer to similar organizations on a larger scale in the future.

“It’s pretty encouraging to see this activity. I think it’s taken a while and I think there’s still more to do here,” he said. “It’s moving in the right direction, I would say, in terms of paying attention to some of the really critical issues that we’re seeing.”

Read the full White House statement here.

Feel free to send tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.