If you’re thinking of getting an omicron-specific Covid booster shot, you might be wondering what its side effects are — and how severe they might be.
Rest assured: They’re not expected to be much different from what you may have experienced with previous vaccine and booster doses.
“We just don’t have any data on this [yet], essentially giving two vaccines in one shot — but biologically, I just wouldn’t expect the side effects, severity or the safety profile of the shots to be different from the current mRNA vaccines and boosters,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and member of an independent advisory group to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, tells CNBC Make It.
The reformulated shots from Pfizer and Moderna are bivalent, which means they target both the original Covid strain and omicron’s BA.5 and BA.4 subvariants. Side effect data isn’t available yet because the new boosters were approved by the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before fully completing their clinical trials.