NEWS

Pfizer has announced that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has recommended the company’s bivalent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine, Abrysvo, for maternal immunisation.
ACIP has recommended the jab as a maternal RSV vaccine for pregnant people from 32 to 36 weeks gestation, and using seasonal administration to prevent RSV lower respiratory tract infections in infants.

Luis Jodar PhD, chief medical affairs officer of Vaccines/Antivirals and Evidence Generation at Pfizer, commented: “This fall marks the start of the annual respiratory infection season in the Northern Hemisphere, and we are prepared with vaccines against multiple infectious diseases and – for the first time in history – an available RSV vaccine to help prevent disease in two at-risk populations. Today’s ACIP recommendation for maternal immunisation with Abrysvo reinforces the wide-ranging impact vaccines can have, including helping protect infants immediately at birth from the potentially severe and life-threatening complications that can develop from RSV. Approximately 75% of RSV-related hospitalisations in newborns and infants occur in the first six months of life.”

 This recommendation will become official once it is reviewed by the director of the CDC, and follows the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the vaccine in August 2023.