The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the updated Covid-19 vaccines on Thursday, allowing manufacturers to begin shipping doses to pharmacies and doctors’ offices across the country. The FDA approved the updated Covid vaccines from Moderna, Novavax-Sanofi and Pfizer-BioNTech, the companies said Thursday, after an advisory panel recommended that the shots should target the dominant XFG variant. All manufacturers previously said they could make the updated vaccine in time for the 2026-27 immunization season. The vaccines are approved for people aged 65 and older and for younger people with underlying conditions that put them at higher risk of negative outcomes from a Covid infection. (For younger people with such conditions, age approvals vary by manufacturer: the Moderna vaccine is approved for children older than six months, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children five years and older, and the Novavax-Sanofi vaccine for children 12 years and older.) Last fall, the Trump administration stopped recommending Covid vaccines to everyone, creating confusion over who was eligible to receive the shots. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says it recommends vaccines “based on individual decision-making.” It is unclear when, or if, the administration will issue updated recommendations for the 2026-27 vaccination season, as the CDC advisory panel has been in limbo since a March ruling that blocked Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointment of a slate of vaccine advisors to the panel. The absence of a working CDC vaccine dashboard also raises questions about whether insurers will cover the updated shots. Insurers generally must cover vaccines recommended by the panel, but it is unclear what they will do if there is no recommendation. CDC dashboards show the current level of Covid-19 activity tracked by testing, and wastewater monitoring is low but has increased in recent weeks. Reuters contributed reporting
