“The two mRNA vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech using the original SARS-CoV-2 virus have proved to be effective at reducing severe disease, even against omicron. “The existing vaccines are doing an absolutely terrific job of keeping people out of hospital, out of ICU, and alive,” says Sten Vermund, MD, PhD, an infectious disease epidemiologist, and professor at the Yale School of Public Health and a pediatrician at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

Under the direction of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have started clinical trials of bivalent vaccines targeting BA.4 and BA.5, which have nearly identical spike proteins. This means that the vaccine will be a mixture of the original vaccine and one that has been reformulated to target the mutated spike proteins of the now-dominant subvariants.

All vaccines approved by stringent regulatory agencies (SRAs) or with WHO Emergency Use Listing (EUL) are safe and effective at reducing the risk of severe disease and death due to COVID-19 infection.

Please remember that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccinations outweigh the risks of getting severely ill with COVID-19. If you are able to get vaccinated, do not delay it. Getting vaccinated could save your life.

Read more on different types of COVID-19 vaccines here.

For the latest information on vaccines, please visit the ‘What you need to know’ pages for AstraZeneca, Covaxin, Johnson and Johnson (J&J),  Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer, Sinopharm and Sinovac.”

WHO World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)-vaccines)