Aug 23 (Reuters) - U.S. health officials said on Friday

the government's free COVID-19 test delivery programs would

reopen in late September, in time for the holiday season, and

that they had launched an educational campaign targeting those

at risk of severe disease.

The free testing program would be launched "as families

start to move indoors this fall and begin spending time with

their loved ones, both very old and very young," Dawn O'Connell,

an official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,

told reporters.

The measures come as the rate of COVID hospitalizations

and deaths in the United States has increased in the last three

months.

Hospitalizations associated with COVID jumped from 1.1

per 100,000 people at the beginning of May to 4.4 at the

beginning of August.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved updated

mRNA COVID vaccines on Thursday, targeting a recently

circulating variant, to better protect the population heading

into the fall and winter.

The updated vaccines include those made by Pfizer ( PFE ),

its German partner BioNTech and Moderna ( MRNA ).

However, the FDA did not clear Novavax's ( NVAX )

traditional protein-based shot.