What to know about the COVID-19 Vaccine for Fall/Winter 2024/2025

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The updated Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 (COVID) vaccine is approved for everyone 6 months of age or older. BCH is now administering updated Moderna COVID vaccines for everyone ages 12 and older. (Please check back often for updates on scheduling vaccinations for individuals 11 years and younger.)

Call your BCH primary care provider’s office directly to schedule your vaccination. If you do not have a BCH primary care provider, please call your doctor’s office or a local pharmacy for information on COVID vaccination.

BCH is administering only the Moderna COVID vaccine.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that since mid-May, the number of people testing positive for COVID keeps rising and that emergency room visits for COVID have been increasing. Hospitalizations are rising, too.

COVID vaccines continue to be one of the best and safest ways to protect yourself and your loved ones against severe COVID illness, hospitalization and possibly death. Recent studies show that vaccination also reduces your risk of suffering from long COVID. Moreover, COVID vaccines remain central to the overall strategy for mitigating the spread and health impacts of COVID, along with masking, improved ventilation, COVID testing and antivirals.

In this Q&A, Amie Meditz, MD, a Boulder Community Health (BCH) infectious diseases physician at the Beacon Center for Infectious Diseases, shares details about the updated COVID vaccine, including what makes it different from previous COVID vaccines, who should get it and whether it’s safe to get it alongside vaccines for other fall viruses.

Q. How are the updated COVID vaccines different?

A. The updated COVID vaccines target the KP.2 strain of the virus, a descendant of the highly contagious omicron subvariant JN.1 that began circulating widely in the U.S. earlier this year.

KP.2 was the dominant COVID strain in May, but now accounts for a minority of all U.S. cases, according to the CDC (Aug. 17, 2024).

A new variant called KP.3.1.1 is now the gaining ground, responsible for more than a third of cases, as of Aug. 17, 2024. Still, messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna have said their KP.2 vaccines can produce strong immune responses against other circulating subvariants of JN.1, such as KP.3, and experts expect that they will protect against severe illness, including hospitalization and death.

Q: Is there any difference between the manufacturers of the vaccine?

A: Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID vaccines, both using mRNA technology, can be used interchangeably. mRNA is a type of molecule that delivers a specific set of instructions to your cells to make pieces of protein used by certain viruses, helping produce an immune response to fight off a viral attack. While this technology is new to the public, the development of mRNA vaccines is the result of decades of research that began in the 1990s.

The Novavax vaccine is the only protein-based COVID vaccine option previously approved in the U.S. Protein-based vaccines have been around for decades and are still widely used for the prevention of many diseases such as hepatitis B, influenza and human papillomavirus (HPV). These are vaccines that contain harmless parts/pieces of the virus ready made to stimulate the immune system. Novavax has been updated to target the JN.1 strain. However, JN.1 and KP.2 have largely faded from circulation, according to the CDC.

Q. Who should get the new Covid vaccine? And, when?

A. For this fall, the CDC recommended that all Americans ages 6 months and older get the updated vaccine. For those 12 years and older, and who are not immune compromised, you should wait 8 weeks from you last COVID vaccine to get updated 2024-2025 formulation.

Right now, for those ages 65 years and older, only a single dose of 2024-2025 COVID vaccine is currently recommended. However, similar to last year, recommendations could evolve based on additional research this season. It is critically important that people at the highest risk of a severe COVID infection — including people over 65, or with weakened immune systems or underlying health conditions, such as heart disease or obesity — get the vaccine.

Q: If you’ve had a recent COVID infection, should you still get the 2024-2025 vaccine?

A. Having recent COVID is another way our immune system gets a boost to fight off new infections from the virus that causes COVID.. According to CDC guidance, if you’ve recently had Covid, “you may consider delaying your vaccine dose by 3 months.”

However, for people at high risk of severe illness, experts recommend getting an updated vaccine as soon as it becomes available to optimize protection from severe disease and hospitalization.

Q: Is the new vaccine considered a “booster”?

A: The medical community has shifted from calling this a booster to calling it an updated COVID vaccine. Calling it an updated vaccine reflects that we’re not just boosting existing immunity from previous vaccinations. Instead, the vaccine builds a new immune response to variants that are currently circulating.

Q: Will COVID-19 vaccines become a yearly thing?

A: The U.S. is entering a stage where getting a vaccine that protects against COVID will become an annual preventive event, like getting a flu shot. The vaccine would be updated by changing the formulation to include variant(s) that are predicted to be predominant during the respiratory virus season. There may be additional doses of vaccine recommended for people in certain risk groups.

Q: Are there any side effects to the updated vaccine that are different from previous shots?

A: The possible side effects reported for the updated COVID vaccine are the same as with the previous vaccines.

Q: Can you get the COVID, flu and RSV vaccines at the same time?

A: For some people, getting all of the recommended vaccines at a single appointment (called coadministration) is the easiest way to stay up to date. The good news it’s safe to receive vaccines for the COVID, flu and RSV viruses at the same time. We’ve also seen that the immune response generated by each vaccine does not change based on whether they are administered at the same time or separately.

Q: Is the updated COVID vaccine free?

A: The updated COVID vaccine is free for most Americans through health care coverage from private health insurance and/or Medicare.

Q: What if I still get COVID after being vaccinated?

A: At-home tests for the virus can identify infection so you can protect your family, coworkers and the general public. BCH still offers respiratory virus testing that can be ordered by your provider. If you do get COVID, talk to your doctor to see if you are a candidate for anti-viral therapies, which have been shown to reduce the risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death in certain people.