The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it had advised drugmakers to update the Covid vaccines to target the KP.2 strain, a descendant of the highly contagious JN.1 variant that began circulating widely in the U.S. this winter. 

The announcement came just over a week after an FDA advisory panel voted unanimously to recommend that the Covid vaccines for the fall be updated to target the JN.1 variant or one of its descendants. 

Following the vote, there was a disagreement between panel members and Dr. Peter Marks, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, about which strain the agency should choose. Most panel members expressed a preference for JN.1, while Marks preferred selecting a newer strain, such as KP.2.

Read more at NBC.

“Do you have the COVID-19 vaccines here with you today?” was a question I received from a community member during a vaccine education session in San Bernardino, California, in September 2023. Sadly, I had to inform the congregant that I did not have the vaccines on hand as a previous vaccinating partner had recently jilted me.

This question marked a turning point in my three-year journey to promote vaccine uptake within Black communities in San Bernardino County. Gone were the questions heavily riddled with vaccine mistrust and weariness, and in their place was the intent to be immunized. This brings forth a harsh reality: We cannot address trustworthiness without addressing the ever-present accessibility barriers to preventative health across minoritized populations in the United States.

Read more at Science Speaks.

Ask a friend what DNA is and, chances are, they have a general idea.

Seventy years after scientists discovered the two-stranded helix, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is widely understood as the keeper of our genetic information and a window into our ancestry. It has become a household word.

Not so with RNA.

“RNA was never the star of the show,” writes Tom Cech, a distinguished professor of biochemistry at CU Boulder who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989 for his research on RNA. “It was like a biochemical backup singer slaving away in the shadows of the diva.”

As Cech reveals in his new book “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” RNA (ribonucleic acid) is having its moment, with research surging globally and more than 400 RNA-based drugs in development.

Read more at CU Boulder Today.

As much as we’d like to think that COVID-19 is behind us, the virus isn’t going anywhere. Health officials continue to recommend that people get vaccinated for both COVID-19 and influenza every year for the foreseeable future, and high hospitalization rates for COVID-19 in the past winter were a reminder that SARS-CoV-2 can still cause serious disease.

Soon, that may be possible with one shot instead of two. On June 10, Moderna reported that its combination COVID-19/influenza shot generated even better immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 and influenza than those elicited by existing, separate vaccines.

Read more at Time.

One of the nation’s premier medical advisory organizations has weighed in on long Covid with a 265-page report that recognizes the seriousness and persistence of the condition for millions of Americans.

More than four years since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, long Covid continues to damage many people’s ability to function, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a nongovernmental institution that advises federal agencies on science and medicine.

Read more at The New York Times.

Government advisers Wednesday said it’s time to update the recipe for the COVID-19 vaccines Americans will receive in the fall — targeting a version of the ever-evolving coronavirus called JN.1.

While COVID-19 cases currently are low, more surges are inevitable and manufacturers need time to brew shots for fall. Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax all have tested doses updated to match the JN.1 variant that became dominant last winter.

But just a few months later, numerous offshoots of JN.1 already are on the rise, prompting Moderna and Pfizer to also test a slightly different vaccine formula targeting what’s now the most common U.S. subtype, called KP.2.

Read more at ABC.

The number of U.S. mpox cases has more than doubled compared with last year, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been urging clinicians across states to encourage vaccinations for those at risk.

As of May 25, the nation had seen a roughly 150% increase in cases of the disease formerly known as monkeypox — from 434 at that time last year to 1,089 this year, according to the CDC. About a third of the cases are in New York state, New York City (which the CDC reports separately), New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Read more at Stateline.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved another vaccine to help protect older people from respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV. The shot, made by Moderna and sold under the name of mResvia, could be another tool in the country’s RSV arsenal in the fall.

Moderna’s shot is the third RSV vaccine for people 60 and older that’s gotten the green light from the FDA and the first mRNA vaccine among them. It’s the company’s second product to receive FDA approval, behind its Covid-19 vaccine.

Read more at CNN.

Even a peep of news about a new flu pandemic is enough to set scientists clucking about eggs.

They worried about them in 2005, and in 2009, and they’re worrying now. That’s because millions of fertilized hen eggs are still the main ingredient in making vaccines that, hopefully, will protect people against the outbreak of a new flu strain.

“It’s almost comical to be using a 1940s technology for a 21^st-century pandemic,” said Rick Bright, who led the Health and Human Services Department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) during the Trump administration.

Read more at KFF Health News.

Moderna’s RSV shot for adults 60 and older was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, joining a growing group of vaccines protecting against the major respiratory threat.

Why it matters: It’s Moderna’s second approved product, and company officials said it’s the first mRNA vaccine approved for a disease other than COVID-19.

Driving the news: Moderna expects to launch its vaccine, mResvia, in time for respiratory virus season this fall.

Read more at Axios.