More than half of Americans plan to get updated COVID shot

Enlarge / A vial of the updated 2023-2024 formula of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine at a CVS Pharmacy in Eagle Rock, California, on September 14, 2023. (credit: Getty | Irfan Khan)

Despite last year's abysmal fall booster campaign, more than half of US adults say they plan to get the latest COVID-19 vaccine, which was greenlit by federal authorities last week.

According to polling by Politico and Morning Consult, 57 percent of registered voters said they would "probably" or "definitely" get the vaccine, which is a monovalent shot that targets the recent omicron subvariant, XBB.1.5. Specifically, 20 percent of voters said they would probably get the shot, while 37 percent said they definitely would.

Collectively, that's nearly triple the actual uptake of last year's updated vaccine, a bivalent shot that targeted both the ancestral strain and the omicron subvariants BA.4/5. In total, 20.5 percent of people aged 18 or older received that shot, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, 17 percent of the US population got the bivalent booster.