Marylanders over 60 may be eligible for a vaccine that has been years in the making this fall.

The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first vaccine for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), more often referred to as the common cold.

However, the illness is responsible for about 14,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, mostly in babies and older adults.

The vaccine was created by GSK and can be given as a single shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will consider the inoculation next month.

“If we have a vaccine that can reduce the likelihood of hospitalization and death and other severe illness, it will make a big difference to those susceptible individuals,” said Dr. Leana Wen, former Baltimore City health commissioner and professor of public health at George Washington University.

Both Pfizer and Moderna are also developing RSV vaccines, and there are other shots being researched that are focused on younger children.

Earlier this year and late last year, Maryland saw a spike in RSV cases among children to the point where hospitals were reaching capacity.

The reason for the uptick in severe cases was multifactorial, but Dr. Theresa Nguyen, chair of pediatrics at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, says COVID is one of the main causes.

“For the last two winter seasons, most people have been masked,” she said. “If you're wearing a mask, and you sneeze or you cough, you're not spreading it, and sharing those germs with other people. That's why we didn't see very much of RSV in the last two years. The disadvantage is our body has forgotten its immune memory. Since we haven't seen these viruses in a while, it is something brand new. And we have to mount this whole new immune response.”