Scott Hensley

In a highly anticipated decision, the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer’s Paxlovid as the first antiviral pill to treat COVID-19 at home.

The medicine, called molnupiravir, is taken twice a day for five days and works by preventing the virus from replicating. Merck says it will have 10 million packs available by the end of the month.

The authorization comes in the midst of an explosion of COVID-19 cases nationwide driven by the omicron variant — a surge that has brought a spike in pediatric hospitalizations.

Pfizer and BioNTech are planning to ask the Food and Drug Administration to authorize a second COVID-19 booster shot for people age 65 and older.

The vaccines now in use are based on the form of the virus that circulated at the beginning of the pandemic and are less effective against the omicron variant. New options are in the works.

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration overwhelmingly voted to recommend that it authorize Novavax’s two-dose vaccine against COVID-19.

The new shots from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech target both the original strain of the coronavirus and the omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants that most people are catching now.

Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration today endorsed a proposal to make big changes in the nation’s approach to vaccinating people against COVID-19.

At least 58,000 childern younger than 5 years old are hospitalized each year with RSV infections. A Pfizer vaccine given to pregnant people could help protect their infants from severe RSV illness.

Hungarian-born biochemist Katalin Karikó and American immunologist Drew Weissman found that a chemical change to genetic code called mRNA eliminated a problematic side effect when used in vaccines.