UK health authorities have announced that they will begin rolling out Moderna’s new vaccine against the Omicron COVID-19 variant in the first week of September.
NHS England said residents of care homes and those who are homebound will be the first to be vaccinated as the rollout begins on 5 September. A wider rollout he plans to begin on September 12th.
NHS CEO Amanda Pritchard said: in early September. “
The NHS will also roll out flu vaccines and encourage eligible people to take offers as early in the month as possible.
Pritchard urged anyone who was invited to take both the fall booster and the flu vaccine to “do it as soon as possible. This will give us maximum protection this winter.”
heart inflammation risk
The UK was the first country in the world to approve Moderna’s bivalent vaccine, which targets both the original strain of the virus and the Omicron variant.
The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) announced on August 15 that the vaccine had been found to meet regulatory safety, quality and efficacy standards.
The MHRA says the vaccine’s side effects are the same as those seen with the original Moderna booster dose and are “usually mild and self-resolving.”
“No serious safety concerns were identified,” the regulator said.
However, there have been well-documented cases of side effects associated with previous COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Moderna.
A French peer-reviewed study concluded in June that with both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the risk of myocarditis, a type of heart inflammation, spikes one week after vaccination.
The risk of myocarditis after Moderna vaccination was 30-fold higher than that of unvaccinated controls, and the greatest association with myocarditis after Modernajab was 44 in those aged 18 to 24 years. It was twice as expensive.
A U.S. vaccine maker has confirmed that more than 1,000 cases of myocarditis were detected in patients under the age of 40 who received Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in June.
The company has not reported any cases of pericarditis, another heart inflammatory condition, that has been linked to vaccines manufactured by both the company and Pfizer.
Both myocarditis and pericarditis can have serious consequences, and doctors often tell patients to stop all physical activity for a period of time.
Zachary Stieber and PA Media contributed to this report.
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