Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
The Food and Drug Administration on Aug. 27 approved COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Sanofi.
A nurse prepares to give a COVID-19 vaccine to a child in Denver, Colo., on Nov. 3, 2021. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)The new shots from Pfizer and Moderna use the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) platform and target the XFG strain, a subvariant of the JN.1 variant.
Regulators also cleared a COVID-19 vaccine shot from Sanofi that targets the XFG strain and does not use mRNA technology.
The approval is for people aged 65 and older, as well as people aged 12 to 64 who have one or more underlying conditions such as obesity that officials say puts them at higher risk of severe COVID-19.
Regulators have been approving updated COVID-19 vaccines for several years, in a bid to better match circulating strains. The previous versions of the vaccines were estimated to provide 58 percent protection against hospitalization, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The FDA did not announce the approvals in a press release, as it has done in the past.
The FDA and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been critical of mRNA vaccines against respiratory diseases, saying they don't work well.
Manufacturers are going to run single-arm studies evaluating the shots in humans
