Apple to reportedly update syringe emoji to more closely resemble vaccine

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FILE - Health staff from the private hospital, Clinica Colombia, start their novel coronavirus vaccinations with doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as part of the first phase of the vaccination plan.

Apple will reportedly be updating its syringe emoji to mimic what a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine looks like in real life in its latest software release.

According to a blog post by Emojipedia, Apple has already debuted its newest set of emojis in their beta release of the company’s latest 14.5 iOS software update.

The Beta Software Program from Apple allows product users early access to the latest software updates in order to provide any helpful feedback before updates are released to the masses.

The 14.5 iOS update will be available for everyone later this month.

The syringe emoji dates back to 1999 in Japan where the emoji was used mostly to symbolize a blood donation, according to Emojipedia.

And in a sign of the times, the use of the syringe emoji has evolved amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to a survey conducted by Emojipedia.

"Instead of focusing on blood and tattoos, tweets using the Syringe emoji become very focused on COVID-19 vaccines (e.g ‘vaccine,’ ‘vaccines,’ ‘COVID,’ ‘Pfizer’) and the political context of the vaccine disruption (e.g. ‘Donald’)," according to Emojipedia. "This goes to show that use of the Syringe to mean ‘vaccine’ is happening, regardless of the change to the emoji design."

Along with the syringe emoji, some other emojis that saw a recent uptick in use were the "pill," "microbe," "masked face" as well as the "loudly crying face," to name a few.

Apple will also reportedly be changing the look of the headphones emoji to resemble their Apple AirPods Max.