The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday dismissed an online rumor claiming that Taiwan is offering a new “COVID-19 BXX.1.5 vaccine” developed by the US for elderly people ahead of other countries.
The CDC said it has noticed an online rumor that is urging people not to get the new COVID-19 “BXX.1.5” vaccine, which it claims that the US citizens are not receiving, and that Taiwan is administering it to people older than 65, before any other country does that.
It also misleadingly claims that the government is sacrificing people’s health by using them as “lab rats” for testing the new vaccine for the US, and allowing the new vaccines with “unknown” side effects.
Photo courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control
The CDC refuted the online rumor and asked people not to forward it to other people.
The adapted COVID-19 vaccine targeting Omicron XBB.1.5 is the same one used in other countries and is effective in protecting against recent dominant strains of the virus, it said.
Moderna’s XBB.1.5-adapted COVID-19 vaccine has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for import, and animal experiments and small-scale immunogenicity testing have shown that the vaccine can trigger better vaccine neutralizing antibody response against Omicron XBB subvariants, including XBB.1.5 and XBB.1.16, the CDC said, adding that it can also trigger similar vaccine neutralizing antibody response against new subvariants EG.5 and BA.2.86.
The local or general adverse reactions after getting the XBB.1.5-adapted COVID-19 vaccine is similar to that of the previous Moderna vaccine, the CDC said.
Moreover, US FDA on Sept. 11 approved Moderna’s XBB.1.5-adapted COVID-19 vaccine for people aged six months and older, and the US CDC on Sept. 12 recommended the vaccine, it said, adding that Japan has also begun offering the vaccine to people aged six months and older from Wednesday last week.
The CDC said the Omicron XBB subvariants are the dominant strains circulating globally and domestically, and over 70 percent of the hospitalized moderate-to-severe local cases in Taiwan are elderly people, so the government-funded vaccination program was launched on Tuesday first for elderly people.
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