FDA's Omicron-specific boosters nod is ground-breaking news but booster uptake remains poor

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week approved both the Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and BioNTech (Nasdaq: BNTX), and the Moderna (Nasdaq: MRNA) omicron-specific booster against COVID-19. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) also recommended such approvals.

Responding to the FDA announcement, analytics firm GlobalData’s pharma analyst Emily Martyn, offered her views, saying: “The success of the mRNA* vaccine platform cannot be understated. It has saved millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic and revolutionized the future of biologics therapy. The continued development of Omicron-specific boosters alone highlights the mRNA vaccine platform's speed and flexibility. However, the uptake of these new boosters, expected to be rolled out in fall/winter, is predicted to mirror the poor uptake patterns of other recent boosters. New ideas are urgently needed to encourage as many people as possible to accept the fall/winter boosters, or we risk reinfection and the possibility of yet more variants.

“The Omicron variant induces milder disease, with a study published by JAMA revealing that 56% of those infected were unaware that they had the Omicron variant, and 46% were asymptomatic**. This, in turn, correlates with poor booster uptake rates: if you don’t know you have the disease, you may be tempted to risk not getting a booster. Data from the CDC*** shows that only 27.3% of the population have received a booster dose within the 18-49 age group. Uptake is stronger in the older age groups, yet only 24.6% of those aged over 65 have received their second booster dose. This falls to 10.2% in those aged 50-64.