The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved Merck’s new pneumococcal vaccine for adults 18 and older.
The vaccine, which will be sold under the name Capvaxive, is designed to protect against pneumococcal pneumonia, which hospitalizes about 150,000 adults in the United States every year and kills about 1 in 20 who develop it, according to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. The vaccine is also designed to protect against infections that progress to the rarer but more life-threatening invasive pneumococcal disease, which can take the form of bloodstream infections or pneumococcal meningitis; these conditions kill roughly 1 in 6 older adults who develop them. The NFID estimates that about 3,000 older adults die of these conditions annually.