By Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The Food and Drug Administration has approved newly formulated covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. Unlike booster shots released in the past, this vaccine isn’t made with components of the original covid variants that spread in 2020. It’s a monovalent vaccine that targets an omicron subvariant instead, reports The New York Times, as advised by the FDA in June.
The new vaccines specifically address the omicron variant XBB.1.5, which became the dominant covid strain in certain parts of the US last winter and is more closely related to EG.5, which currently accounts for 21.5 percent of cases, according to CDC data.
Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance program…