What’s the future of COVID boosters? FDA vaccine panel moves toward simplifying shots.
Over two years after the first COVID-19 shots became available, a federal advisory panel discussed methods to simplify and routineize the vaccine. Over 90% of the American public has now been infected, vaccinated or both, meaning that the level of protection against severe disease is vastly different from when vaccines were first introduced in December 2020. With vaccines and boosters approved incrementally for different vaccines and different age groups as the SARS-CoV-2 virus continued to evolve, the Food and Drug Administration’s Dr. David Kaslow opened the panel’s all-day meeting with more than a dozen vaccines and schedules. As SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve and persist, the FDA hopes to simplify vaccine options and provide a process for updating shots every year.
