U.S. regulators are releasing new batches of Moderna’s reformulated COVID-19 booster after some pharmacies reported limited supply.
Federal, state and local officials are pushing Americans to get a fall booster that targets the BA.4 and BA.5 variants of the coronavirus alongside the original strain discovered in China. They want to stave off a winter surge of hospitalizations and deaths.
But pharmacies said they had trouble keeping the Moderna version of the booster in stock after an initial round of shots from the Massachusetts company and its rival, Pfizer-BioNTech, became available earlier this month.
Rite-Aid and Walgreens said appointments for the Moderna version were not steadily available across the country but they had enough of the Pfizer version, according to CNN.