This fall season could usher in another round of COVID-19 vaccines. But unlike before, it might be the first time people are injected with a dose that doesn't target the original strain of the novel coronavirus that led to worldwide shutdowns in 2020 in the first place.
True to its name, the current bivalent vaccine protects against both the original strain of the virus and omicron variants from BA.4 and BA.5 lineages. While people who were vaccinated early on in the pandemic received the monovalent Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, those are no longer authorized for use because data showed that the bivalent Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines provided better protection against severe illness and hospitalization as the virus mutated.
