FDA approves Merck's pneumonia vaccine for adults

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Merck's (MRK) new vaccine to protect adults from pneumonia.

Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani reports more on how the vaccine works as the pharmaceutical company awaits the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) recommendation.

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl

Video Transcript

We are also watching shares of me after the FDA approved the company's new vaccine, which is designed to protect adults from a bacteria that could cause pneumonia.

Yahoo finances, health care reporter can has details on this.

Actually.

That's right man.

So this vaccine got approved by the FDA.

We're still waiting on a word from the CDC on what kind of recommendation they make on who should get.

What we do know that the that the bacteria does infect adults, especially older adults and younger kids are more susceptible to the disease.

And so they have already been vaccines on the market that addresses but me takes it a step further.

If you watch the history of the pneumococcal pneumonia vaccines, they have been chasing these strains.

There are currently the latest one was fire with 20 strains and that was a couple of years ago.

So me coming out with a few more and now covering 21 strains.

This is a really important for especially older adults.

65 and older, typically about 6 30% are affected by very serious disease.

One in 20 adults die from being infected.

So this is a very serious disease that uh the vaccine protects against.

And we'll wait to hear if this is going to be recommended as a mandatory or, uh, you know, it's kind of like the flu uh for older adults.

And that will help me.

Of course, bottom line, we know that Merck is facing a lot of pressure with the uh patent cliff that they are facing with Kruta.

So all eyes on any new products that they launch right now.