Alberta infectious disease experts encouraged new bivalent omicron-specific booster now approved

Health Canada approved a variant-specific vaccine Thursday which some Alberta infectious disease experts hope will encourage uptake as doses become available this fall. The bivalent vaccine created by Moderna/Spikevax uses MRNA technology to increase an immune response to earlier editions of SARS-COV2 and has been designed to specifically target the Omicron variant BA.1. One infectious disease expert said the updated version may lag behind more recent virus mutations in circulation, but the deve