(NEW YORK) — Updated COVID-19 vaccines that could better match the more recent variants are on the way.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s committee of independent advisors met and recommended that the vaccines should target the latest omicron variant, kicking off the process for distribution of the new vaccines this fall.

That could be good news for the fight against the virus. But the next few months hold a lot of uncertainty.

Many vaccine scientists agree that as the virus evolves, vaccines should be updated along with it. But scientists caution that planning ahead in this pandemic is challenging. A new variant could emerge by the fall, rendering even new vaccines old by then.

There’s also a question of how many people will get the shot — both because the government doesn’t have enough funding to secure vaccines for everyone, and because less than half of eligible Americans have received their first booster shots.

That said, the vaccine companies have been testing different strategies for a new-and-improved booster shot.

On Tuesday, the FDA’s advisers reviewed the data and favored a bivalent vaccine — a type of vaccine that targets two strains of virus in the same shot. They recommended that it include the latest omicron subvariant and the original strain, generally supporting it because it could protect more broadly against future variants.

FDA leadership will announce the final decision sometime in early July, incorporating the advisers’ discussion from Tuesday.

Health officials are aiming to roll out the newly designed vaccines in early October, said Dr. Peter Marks, who oversees the FDA’s vaccine department.

The goal is to get ahead of a potential surge next winter.

“That combination of waning immunity, combined with the potential emergence of novel variants during a time this winter when we will move inside as a population, increases our risk of a major COVID-19 outbreak,” Marks said.

“And for that reason, we have to give serious consideration to a booster campaign this fall to help protect us during this period from another COVID-19 surge,” he said.

How much better will the new vaccines be?

Scientists cautioned that existing vaccines are still working well to prevent severe illness.

And while newer shots will help, they might not be significantly better at preventing more mild breakthrough illness.

“It will be better than what we have now, but I don’t think we are going to see 94% again,” said Dr. Paul Goepfert, professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The current vaccines, designed to match the original Wuhan virus, initially showed efficacy of 94% — but that’s now thought to be an untenable goal because of rapidly-evolving new variants, Goepfert said.

“It’s essentially an arms race,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, author on the recent study and director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “As the population becomes more immune, the virus becomes more and more immune evasive.”

Updated vaccines “will be helpful,” Barouch said, but are unlikely to be a “game changer” that end the need for future boosters.

The political snag getting in the way

The other major caveat to the rollout of new vaccines this fall is funding — the battle over which has been stuck in a stalemate on Capitol Hill since the winter.

The White House has since pulled funds out of COVID test manufacturing and put it toward contract negotiations for the newest vaccines, but the decision leaves the US vulnerable to a testing shortage, and still doesn’t fully do the job.

“It’s very clear we’re not going to have enough vaccines for every adult who wants one,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID coordinator, said last week.

Jha called the decision to move money away from testing “incredibly painful,” but necessary to avoid missing out on orders entirely as other countries placed theirs.

“Contract negotiators on behalf of the US government are going to enter into contract negotiations with Moderna and Pfizer with the resources that we’ve been able to … cobble together for vaccines for the fall,” Jha said.

The government will purchase enough for high-risk Americans to get the latest vaccines, Jha said.

But it’s unclear how the rest of the population will get access to the vaccines. On one hand, demand for vaccines has continued to drop since the initial doses. If that trend continues and fewer people want a vaccine, it’s possible that the government’s smaller order could still cover people who want one.

And some experts don’t think everyone will need a booster in the fall, like Dr. Paul Offitt, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who said he thinks re-upping antibody levels ahead of a likely winter surge would be beneficial for high-risk groups, but not necessary for everybody.

Another option is for insurance companies to step in and cover vaccines, rather than the government distributing them for free. Jha dismissed this option, though, calling it too soon to switch to the private market because there’s still too much competition for ordering doses among countries and insurance companies wouldn’t have enough leverage.

“There is not a commercialization plan that somehow would be ready in time for this fall and winter,” Jha said.

Yet vaccine companies have indicated that they’re ready to distribute their vaccines through insurance companies and won’t leave the American market behind.

Though it’s still months away, both the White House and the vaccine companies have committed to devising a plan as fall draws closer.

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(NEW YORK) — Jey Austen, a brand designer at a fintech company, lost their job about two weeks ago. But the layoff didn’t come as a surprise, said Austen, 27, who is trans and uses they/them pronouns.

A market downturn in recent months has hammered the tech industry, eliciting a wave of layoffs. Austen, whose lease on an apartment in Austin, Texas ends in August, will receive three weeks of severance pay but otherwise lacks savings, they said.

“Worst comes to worst, I’ll sleep in my car,” said Austen, who was making $80,000 a year. “It’s a sucky situation all around.”

Compounding the stress, Austen will likely struggle to afford their usual weekly therapy appointments, they said. To save money, they’re considering a reduction to bi-weekly or monthly appointments. “Therapy was already expensive,” Austen said.

Austen is hardly alone. So far this year, more than 21,000 tech workers have been laid off, according to Crunchbase. While notable, the layoffs make up a small fraction of the 8.9 million tech employees nationwide, according to an employment tally from the industry trade group CompTIA.

Across the economy, acute financial distress could grow as the Federal Reserve pursues a series of rate hikes that aim to dial back sky-high inflation but risk tipping the economy into a recession, experts told ABC News earlier this month.

Nearly 70% of economists believe that a recession will begin at some point next year, according to a survey of 49 macroeconomists conducted by the Financial Times and Chicago University’s Booth School of Business this month.

Research has linked economic recessions — a shrinking of economic output that lasts at least several months — with a rise in mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression and even suicide, experts told ABC News. In hard economic times, the prevalence of potentially catastrophic financial events — such as job loss or foreclosure — exacerbates preexisting mental health challenges and gives rise to new ones, worsening such challenges further if a financial downturn persists over many months or years.

Moreover, since the U.S. healthcare system largely ties insurance to employment, the loss of a job often compromises access to mental health support when a person needs it most, the experts said. The prospect of heightened mental health issues — combined with inadequate support — poses added concern in light of the pandemic, which has already taken a toll on the psyches of many people, the experts added.

“After COVID, there was an unprecedented rise in mental health issues,” Ronald Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News. “This coming in the wake of that is a real double whammy.”

Typically, the economy loses millions of jobs in a recession. During the Great Recession, between 2007 and 2009, nonfarm employment dropped by 6.8 million jobs while the unemployment rate rose from 4.8% to 9.6%, according to the Federal Reserve of St. Louis.

A robust, decades-long body of research links economic downturns with a rise in mental health issues, establishing the role played by a spike in major hardships tied to employment, housing, and other financial supports, experts told ABC News.

A 2019 study published in the Association for Psychological Science — which examined individuals affected by the Great Recession — found an increase in depression, anxiety, and problematic drug use among those who underwent even a single major hardship, such as job loss or foreclosure, let alone multiple incidents.

The loss of a job during the Great Recession increased the risk of a mood disorder in the U.S. by 22%, according to a study released last year by researchers at the University of Alberta that examined the available literature on the subject. The researchers also found found 1.2 to 5.8 times higher odds of a major depressive episode associated with the experience of home foreclosure during the Great Recession.

“Pre-existing mental health issues get worse, and mental health issues newly arise for some undergoing economic hardship,” Ralph Catalano, a professor of public health at the University of California, Berkeley, told ABC News. “How would you feel if you lost your job?”

Chris Ruhm, a economics and public policy professor at the University of Virginia who specializes in the health effects of economic downturns, put it bluntly: “When the economy gets worse, mental health gets worse,” he said

One alarming finding shows a correlation between recessions and increased rates of suicide, Ruhm said. Between 2008 and 2010, the first three years following the financial crisis, the suicide rate rose at a pace more than four times higher than it had over the eight years prior to the crisis, according to a 2012 study in The Lancet. “We’ve known for many years that the suicide rate goes up reliably with the unemployment rate,” Ruhm said.

The adverse mental health effects of an economic downturn fall disproportionately on low-income people and minorities, since they’re less likely to have built up savings or alternative sources of wealth that could soften the blow, experts said.

“People of lower socioeconomic status are always more adversely affected by things like this,” Catalano said. “They have a more difficult time when recessions come.”

The scale of such mental health effects depends on the severity and duration of a recession, experts said. A long recession can prolong the time that individuals spend out of work, deepening mental health struggles as a person grapples with financial stress and possible feelings of self-blame, experts said. “When there’s a more severe recession, the effects are going to be more severe,” said Ruhm, the economics professor at the University of Virginia.

To be sure, the U.S. economy could avoid a recession altogether. If a recession does occur, it could prove short and mild, some economists predict. A mild downturn would blunt many of the worst mental health effects, in part because people are better equipped to withstand a brief financial challenge with savings or government support, experts said.

“With economic downturns that are short, it’s not an enormous effect,” said Kessler, the professor at Harvard Medical School. “A lot of resources are there to buffer for those types of things.”

Still, a potential recession brings stress, in part because the extent of financial difficulty remains uncertain, even for those in the middle and upper-middle class, Ruhm said. “In general, people live with a degree of anxiety and uncertainty,” he said.

A New York City-based employee at the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase — who was laid off this month and requested anonymity due to the terms of a severance agreement — said the prospect of a recession worries her because it could dry up job prospects after the severance pay runs out.

“What if a recession happens and I don’t get something?” she said. “How will I pay the rent?”

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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