More than 522K Marylanders have received bivalent booster shot, officials say
BALTIMORE -- More than 522,000 Maryland residents have received a bivalent booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, designed to protect against two strains of the Omicron variant, since early September, the Maryland Department of Heath said.
The state health department on Monday added the data point to its COVID-19 dashboard, showing how many shots have been administered since Sept. 2.
"We updated our COVID-19 data dashboard to further assist healthcare providers and officials better understand how many Marylanders are staying COVIDReady," said Health Secretary Dennis R. Schrader, referring to a state initiative to prevent serious illness and death this fall and winter.
Updated boosters are available in the state for all Marylanders age 5 and older. Residents who receive the shot should be at least two months removed from their previous booster dose, the health department said.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech released data last week suggesting the updated shots will outperform other vaccines in guarding against the BA.4 and BA.5 variants. The new formulation uses spike proteins from those two strains, the state health department said.
Overall, 89.4% of the entire state has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to state data.
A total of 4,796,287 Marylanders have completed the primary series of vaccines, and 2,641,260 residents have received the initial booster shot.