COVID-19 vaccines designed to target the omicron variant have just been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. Both Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna got the FDA’s sign-off for their booster doses of the reformulated shot. This is the first update to COVID-19 vaccines to be authorized in the United States.

The Pfizer / BioNTech booster is available to people 12 and older, and the Moderna shot will be available to people 18 and older. They’ll only be boosters — they can’t be used by people who haven’t already had their first doses.

The Food and Drug Administration authorized Covid booster shots that target the omicron BA.5 subvariant as the U.S. prepares for another surge of infections this fall and winter.

It is the first time the FDA has authorized an updated vaccine formula since the original shots rolled out in Dec. 2020. Pharmacies are expected to start administering the new boosters after Labor Day weekend.

The U.S. has secured 171 million doses of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s updated shots so far, according to the Health and Human Services Department.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized updated versions of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna that are tailored to be more effective against the Omicron variant.

Why it matters: The updated shots, retooled to target the BA.5 strain that accounts for most cases in the U.S. today, are expected to become available after Labor Day.

Between the lines: The reformulated mRNA shots got regulators' blessing without first being tested in humans.

On Monday, the United Kingdom approved an updated version of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine that targets both the original coronavirus variant and the omicron variant, becoming the first country to do so.

“An updated version of the COVID-19 vaccine made by Moderna that targets two coronavirus variants (known as a ‘bivalent’ vaccine) has today been approved for adult booster doses by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency after it was found to meet the UK regulator’s standards of safety, quality and effectiveness,” an official government release said, per CNN.

Bhasha Mewar has had it with doctors. Over the past two years, Mewar has spent nearly all of her life savings seeing heart and respiratory specialists, haematologists, urologists, dermatologists and more, in a desperate bid to tame her long-COVID symptoms. She has taken a slew of drugs: beta blockers to calm her racing heart, steroid inhalers to ease her laboured breathing and an antimalarial drug prescribed to her for reasons she never fully understood.

There are three different types of long Covid and each has its own set of symptoms, according to researchers.

Experts from King’s College London examined 1,459 people living with long Covid - defined by the study authors as suffering symptoms for at least 84 days after infection - and found there appeared to be three “subtypes” of the condition.

A pre-print of the study, published on medRxiv, revealed people with long Covid appeared to be split into three main groups, including:

When Carrie Anna McGinn woke up alone in her hotel room on Christmas morning in 2020, she thought she was experiencing the worst of her COVID symptoms. She struggled against coughing, cognitive dysfunction, pain, and ​postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.

She was isolated away from her family but expected to be back to normal in time for the New Year’s Eve celebrations. But when January came, many of her symptoms never went away, she told Macleans Magazine.

While we all wish Joe Biden a fast and full recovery from the coronavirus, let’s not forget all the COVID misinformation he has been spreading for years.

In fact, in a fit of irony, no one would believe in fiction; it was exactly one year ago — one year ago to the day — that Biden told the country the COVID vaccination would protect you from being infected.

On July 21, 2022, the White House announced that the twice vaccinated and twice boosted Joe Biden has the coronavirus.

The pattern has become all too familiar: A new version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerges and begins to dominate new Covid-19 cases, until it’s replaced by an even more contagious version of the virus.

The left-leaning media is sounding the alarm on the new COVID-19 variant labeled BA.5, asserting that it’s a "big deal" and calling for people to mask up and get boosted. 

In recent remarks, White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci called for the virus to still be "taken seriously" and warned that Americans who want to put the pandemic in the past must realize it is not gone yet.