Cases involving a new COVID-19 variant – NB.1.8.1 – have been detected in the U.S. The variant is part of the omicron strain, which means the currently approved vaccines should be effective.
This comes on the heels of recent changes in vaccine frameworks made by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The new COVID-19 vaccine recommendations ask for “shared clinical decision making” for healthy children (6 months to 17 years) to receive the COVID vaccine and remove recommendations for pregnant women altogether.
The new framework was introduced outside of the normal vaccine approval and recommendation process involving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the following Q&A, we asked David Higgins, MD, a pediatric preventive medicine specialist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, to weigh in on the variant and recent changes.