What’s the future of COVID boosters? FDA vaccine panel moves toward simplifying shots.
There was discussion about when to update an annual vaccine, and how to target one or more variants that pose the greatest risk.
As people gather and spend more time indoors in early winter, an annual vaccine would likely become available each fall, ahead of what is typically a spike in respiratory viruses. It’s possible to predict what might circulate in the U.S. the following winter based on flu cases six months earlier in Australia, but there’s no such guidance available for COVID-19. BQ.1 and XBB, along with their subvariants, now account for a tiny fraction of cases in the U.S., replacing last summer’s BA.4/BA.5 variants. Since the original viral variant hasn’t been in circulation for more than a year, several committee members are not convinced it should remain in the vaccine. Effectiveness and safety Bivalent boosters have been shown to be effective by the FDA and scientists around the world.
