--- title: Moderna Says New COVID-19 Vaccine Protects Against BA.2.86 description: Moderna's latest COVID-19 vaccine wasn’t designed to target the latest variant, BA.2.86, but still prompts a strong immune response. canonical: https://time.com/6311210/moderna-covid-vaccine-ba286-variant/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-09-06T16:09:53.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:56.435Z article:section: Health og:title: Moderna Says Its New COVID-19 Vaccine Works For BA.2.86 og:description: The vaccine wasn’t designed to target this latest variant, but still prompts a strong immune response, the company reports. og:url: https://time.com/6311210/moderna-covid-vaccine-ba286-variant/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5da9b9afeb8adb10/698a4012011682004998364d/GettyImages-1348139157.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2121 og:image:height: 1193 og:image:alt: Hand in blue medical gloves holding a syringe and vaccine vial with Covid 19 Vaccine Booster text, for Coronavirus booster shot. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Moderna Says Its New COVID-19 Vaccine Works For BA.2.86 twitter:description: The vaccine wasn’t designed to target this latest variant, but still prompts a strong immune response, the company reports. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5da9b9afeb8adb10/698a4012011682004998364d/GettyImages-1348139157.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Moderna Says Its New COVID-19 Vaccine Protects Against the BA.2.86 Variant > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: White House Says the Administration is "Prepared for the Fall" When it Comes to Combatting COVID [Watch (HLS stream): White House Says the Administration is "Prepared for the Fall" When it Comes to Combatting COVID](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/A4u2hWYq.m3u8) (2:25)  _Published 2023-08-29. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday that the administration is "prepared for the Fall" when it comes to dealing with a rise in COVID-19 infections._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Sep 6, 2023 4:09 PM UTC  Hand in blue medical gloves holding a syringe and vaccine vial with Covid 19 Vaccine Booster text, for Coronavirus booster shot. Hand in blue medical gloves holding a syringe and vaccine vial with Covid 19 Vaccine Booster text, for Coronavirus booster shot. iStockphoto—Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Sep 6, 2023 4:09 PM UTC Heading into the fall and winter, health officials and the public alike are better equipped to combat COVID-19 than at any point since the pandemic began in 2019, thanks mainly to a stronger wall of immunity in the population built up with vaccines and natural infections. But questions remain about how protected the public will be in coming months, as cases of new variants inch upward. One in particular, BA.2.86, is raising alarms since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)[ ](https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/whats-new/covid-19-variant.html)[warned](https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/whats-new/covid-19-variant.html) that it “may be more capable of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines.” The growing number of BA.2.86 cases not just in the U.S. but around the world prompted the World Health Organization to [classify](https://www.who.int/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants) it as a “variant under monitoring” as scientists continue to study how well the virus can spread and whether it can cause more serious disease than previous variants. The biggest question is [how well new vaccines](https://time.com/6308418/ba-2-86-covid-19-variant-vaccine/) that U.S. health officials recommended earlier this summer will protect against BA.2.86\. That recommendation came well before BA.2.86 appeared, and vaccine makers have already been producing those versions of the shot in preparation for the fall and winter. In a press release issued on Sept. 6, one of those manufacturers, Moderna, reported that its latest vaccine generates a strong immune response against BA.2.86, helping the immune system to produce 8.7- to 11-fold more antibodies capable of neutralizing the variant compared to before vaccination. The updated vaccine also generated neutralizing antibodies[ ](https://time.com/6308418/ba-2-86-covid-19-variant-vaccine/)[against other new variants EG.5 and FL.1.5.1](https://time.com/6308418/ba-2-86-covid-19-variant-vaccine/). The data came from studies involving immune cells from a group of 50 people who had been up to date with their vaccines, with a most recent booster shot targeting BA.4/5. ### More From TIME The results are encouraging, since this updated vaccine was not developed specifically to target BA.2.86, but XBB.1.5, the variant that was causing most infections earlier in the summer when the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine committee met. The FDA’s panel of independent vaccine experts[ ](https://time.com/6287732/new-covid-19-vaccine-strains/)[suggested](https://time.com/6287732/new-covid-19-vaccine-strains/) targeting a member of the XBB variant family, and[ ](https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/updated-covid-19-vaccines-use-united-states-beginning-fall-2023)expressed a [preference](https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/updated-covid-19-vaccines-use-united-states-beginning-fall-2023) for targeting XBB.1.5, which Moderna and other manufacturers did. The results are reassuring, says Jackie Miller, senior vice president of infectious disease at Moderna, because “there was certainly a question about whether there would be cross-neutralizing protection observed or not because of the differences between the lineages \[of XBB and BA.2.86\].” She says that BA.2.86 binds to human cells in a different way than previous variants have, which raised concerns that it could cause more severe disease. But that difference in how it infects cells is counterbalanced by the fact that the attachment is less efficient, so “what emerging data are showing is that this binding does represent a bit of a disadvantage for the virus,” she says. “We’re going to have to wait and see what this structural change in the way it binds will eventually mean.” But the fact that the vaccine still stimulates a good antibody response is encouraging that it will protect against BA.2.86 as well. The FDA is expected to make a decision in September about which strain the updated COVID-19 vaccine should target, although it’s widely expected that the shot will focus on XBB.1.5\. And so far, Moderna at least is “reassured in terms of the ability of \[that\] vaccine to improve protection against even BA.2.86,” says Miller. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6311210/moderna-covid-vaccine-ba286-variant/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6311210/moderna-covid-vaccine-ba286-variant/"},"headline":"Moderna Says Its New COVID-19 Vaccine Protects Against the BA.2.86 Variant","datePublished":"2023-09-06T16:09:53.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:50:56.435Z","description":"The vaccine wasn’t designed to target this latest variant, but still prompts a strong immune response, the company reports.","url":"https://time.com/6311210/moderna-covid-vaccine-ba286-variant/","keywords":["COVID-19"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5da9b9afeb8adb10/698a4012011682004998364d/GettyImages-1348139157.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5da9b9afeb8adb10/698a4012011682004998364d/GettyImages-1348139157.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Hand in blue medical gloves holding a syringe and vaccine vial with Covid 19 Vaccine Booster text, for Coronavirus booster shot.","caption":"Hand in blue medical gloves holding a syringe and vaccine vial with Covid 19 Vaccine Booster text, for Coronavirus booster shot.","creditText":"iStockphoto—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/covid-19/","name":"COVID-19"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6311210/moderna-covid-vaccine-ba286-variant/","name":"Moderna Says Its New COVID-19 Vaccine Protects Against the BA.2.86 Variant"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"White House Says the Administration is \"Prepared for the Fall\" When it Comes to Combatting COVID","description":"White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday that the administration is \"prepared for the Fall\" when it comes to dealing with a rise in COVID-19 infections.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/A4u2hWYq/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2023-08-29T17:26:59.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/A4u2hWYq.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6311210/moderna-covid-vaccine-ba286-variant/","duration":"PT2M25S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6311210/moderna-covid-vaccine-ba286-variant/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```