--- title: The New COVID-19 Shot Is Surprisingly Effective Against the Latest Variant description: New data on the updated COVID-19 shot show that it's about as protective as the flu vaccine. canonical: https://time.com/6590944/covid-19-vaccine-effective-jn1/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-02-01T20:58:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:34.772Z article:section: Health og:title: The New COVID-19 Shot Is Surprisingly Effective Against the Latest Variant og:description: New data on the updated COVID-19 shot show that it's about as protective as the flu vaccine. og:url: https://time.com/6590944/covid-19-vaccine-effective-jn1/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte2c9df143e938f3b/698a446386f68e4efe6f3307/GettyImages-1674134658.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: New Corona vaccine og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The New COVID-19 Shot Is Surprisingly Effective Against the Latest Variant twitter:description: New data on the updated COVID-19 shot show that it's about as protective as the flu vaccine. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte2c9df143e938f3b/698a446386f68e4efe6f3307/GettyImages-1674134658.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The New COVID-19 Shot Is Surprisingly Effective Against the Latest Variant > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday 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 weekday 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. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=9783c263-b72f-4e42-936e-a433aba9d7d8&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson Apologizes In Front of COVID-19 Inquiry Panel [Watch (HLS stream): Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson Apologizes In Front of COVID-19 Inquiry Panel](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/TWdGwYtD.m3u8) (4:43)  _Published 2023-12-06. The U.K’s COVID-19 Inquiry into the government’s response to the pandemic picked up again on Wednesday morning. The hearings for the initial stage of the investigation were heard in London in June. Today, former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who served as the nation’s leader from 2019 to 2022, was sworn in to give evidence in front of the panel. Shortly into his opening statement, he said that he was sorry for the suffering experienced by COVID victims and their families._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Feb 1, 2024 8:58 PM UTC  18 September 2023, Berlin: An ampoule containing 6 doses of the new Corona vaccine adapted to the Omikron subline XBB.1.5 sits on a table in a pharmacy. Photo: Christophe Gateau/dpa (Photo by Christophe Gateau/picture alliance via Getty Images) 18 September 2023, Berlin: An ampoule containing 6 doses of the new Corona vaccine adapted to the Omikron subline XBB.1.5 sits on a table in a pharmacy. Photo: Christophe Gateau/dpa (Photo by Christophe Gateau/picture alliance via Getty Images) Christophe Gateau/Picture Alliance—Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Feb 1, 2024 8:58 PM UTC The latest COVID-19 vaccine offers good protection against the currently dominant strain of the virus, according to a new [report in the _MMWR_](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7304a2.htm), a journal published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It's the first effectiveness data for the updated vaccine, which was released last fall. Using federal and pharmacy-reported data sets, the team of CDC scientists compared people's COVID-19 test results to their self-reported vaccination status collected from September 2023 to mid-January 2024\. They found that the new vaccine was about 54% effective at protecting people from symptoms of COVID-19\. In other words, the symptoms that prompted people to get tested were less likely to be due to COVID-19 and more likely to be something else among those who were vaccinated a week to four months before getting tested. They further calculated that the vaccine was 49% effective at protecting against symptoms from the [JN.1 variant](https://time.com/6548748/jn1-covid-variant/), which now causes a [majority of infections in the U.S.](https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions)—even though the shot was designed to target a different version of the virus, the XBB.1.5 variant. That part of the analysis was based on the fact that current SARS-CoV-2 lab tests look for three major genetic signatures of the virus, which most of the variants previously contained. JN.1, however, is missing one of them, which allows scientists to distinguish the JN.1 samples from those containing other variants. **Read More**: [_How COVID-19 Vaccines and Infections Are Tweaking Our Immunity_](https://time.com/6564464/covid-19-changing-immune-system/) ### More From TIME “This is, to my knowledge, the first vaccine effectiveness estimates available worldwide for JN.1,” says Ruth Link-Gelles, vaccine effectiveness program lead for COVID-19 and RSV at CDC, who led the analysis. “What these results show is that someone who got this vaccine would have an extra boost of protection against symptomatic infection from both the XBB variant that was common in the fall, as well as JN.1 which is circulating now.” Her group plans to release more detailed data on the vaccine’s impact on emergency room visits, urgent care visits, and hospitalizations in coming weeks, but says these initial data on protecting against infections are encouraging. “The COVID-19 vaccine is looking a lot like the flu vaccine, where we see about 50% protection against influenza in a good year against both infections and hospitalizations,” she says. But any immunity, whether from vaccines or infections, wanes. Link-Gelles says additional data will show how long the protection lasts, especially against symptoms of the disease. (Previous research suggests that protection against severe illness is longer lasting.) The results underscore public health advice to get vaccinated, especially for people at higher risk of complications from COVID-19, such as the elderly, pregnant people and those with underlying health conditions. “There is elevated COVID-19 activity all across the country, but still very low vaccine coverage, with 21% of people over age 18 receiving the latest vaccine and 41% of those over age 65,” says Dr. Manisha Patel, chief medical officer of CDC’s National Center for Infectious Respiratory Diseases. “These data show that really the time to get vaccinated is now.” ## Transcript I thought I understand the feelings of these victims and their families and I am deeply sorry for the pain of the loss and the suffering of those victims and their families and grateful. I am to the hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers and many other public servants. Mm. people who walks of life to protect our country drive to Draper pandemic. I do hope that this inquiry will help to get the answers to the very difficult questions that we can do next time. He's alright we are asking for the avoidance of doubt and make it happen. So you can I haven't removed any walks apps from my but I'll give you everything good. I think you need we may have made mistakes. I think it. I didn't want to try to anticipate the discussion, which I'm sure we will get into about the timings of NPR's lockdowns. It inevitably we got something's wrong. I think we were doing our best to the other time when you give him the information how to find the whole time. I think we we did our level best. Well, that seems we should have done differently. Unquestionably but you know, I would I would struggle to to itemize to move before you not in in in in in in a hard Rocky take personal responsibility fee. Do you take responsibility for whatever my lady makes of the speed of the government's response in January February March of 2020 and the way in which the various moving parts of the government's the advisory committee is the Department's the agencies and so on responded. Do you take responsibility for the lockdown decisions whichever way they went and the timeliness of them? The manner in which patients were discharged from hospital into the castle actor. the explosion of the virus within the Residential Care Center the general speed at which the restrictions were released. the attack to help Heights game and then lastly in 2020 the decision not to introduce the circuit breaker in September or October what to introduce a test System earlier when the prevalence of the virus was lower for good or ill yesterday the rate of excess deaths in this country as I say, I think this is the statistics battery and I think that the every country struggled with a new plan and I think the the UK from the evidence that I have seen was well done the European table in the oldest even further down the road table if I have to answer why I think we faced particular Penguins, I would say it was Irrespective of of government action are we have a Coke and a we are in Europe that they don't help. You, see extremely well aware of the arguments that the long-term decisions and sells cheap Nativity in individually contributed to the number of excess. What do you say to that I say that I don't know but I'm aware of the documents made. What would I would say respectfully to people is that? they were very very difficult decisions and the issue of the timeliness of a blank times was clearly one that we considered. 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