The city is rolling out two updated vaccines for COVID-19, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Tuesday.
Both are designed specifically to target the omicron subvariants, and have received final approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.
The vaccines will be available this week to city residents, provided they already have completed the primary series of vaccinations, the mayor and the Chicago Department of Public Health announced at a Tuesday news conference.
“Today, we are taking a new step to ensure every resident can continue to be protected against COVID-19 and all of its subvariants,” Lightfoot was quoted as saying in a statement issued by her office. “This updated vaccine is critical to our ongoing fight against this pandemic and will help to keep our residents and their communities as healthy as possible.”
She was joined at the news conference by Dr. Allison Arwady, the city’s health commissioner.
“This is big news. These updated vaccines will be a huge help in our efforts to get ahead of the virus this fall and protect residents from the strains we see in Chicago and across the nation right now,” Arwady was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the mayor’s office. “These vaccines are the best possible match to the variants currently circulating, which may not be true a few months down the line, so I urge everyone who is eligible to get yours as soon as possible.”
The new vaccines, from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are “bivalent boosters.” That means they mix two versions of the vaccine. The idea is to boost protection against the original coronavirus strain while also protecting against the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants.
The Pfizer version is available to people ages 12 and up. The Moderna version is for people ages 18 and older.
The city already has been allocated about 150,000 doses of the updated vaccines, with more to come.
To find a vaccination site, check vaccines.gov, a free online service, or call the city’s COVID-19 call center: 312-746-4835.
More than 130 pharmacy locations in Chicago are expected to receive the updated vaccine this week.
Walgreens and CVS offer online scheduling snd some appointments for the boosters will be available as early as Wednesday. Availability depends on how quickly an individual store gets supplies of the shots.
“Stores may still be receiving [vaccines] on a rolling basis,” a Walgreens spokeswoman said.
Contributing: Brett Chase
