While many Americans say they’re over COVID-19, the virus doesn’t seem to have taken the hint. Instead, it’s been spinning off new variants and subvariants at a furious pace and continuing to infect hundreds of thousands of people every day.
But now that frantic pattern could finally be coming to an end — and (fingers crossed) the more predictable COVID future we’ve been promised could be on its way.
As early as Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to authorize new Pfizer and Moderna booster shots tailor-made to fight the Omicron subvariants that have been triggering the vast majority of new U.S. COVID cases for months. A combined 175 million doses should be available shortly after Labor Day.
That moment, in turn, will mark an important milestone. It will be the first time since the start of the pandemic that the vaccine has been updated to target the latest version of the virus — and the first time this year that the virus itself has stopped evolving so fast that we can’t keep up.