Biden Admin Mulling Plan for Annual COVID Boosters

In an effort to keep up the pace with a constantly changing virus and eradicate “old” Covid-19, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is looking at updating its Covid-19 vaccine strategy.fully vaccinated“Model where one gets two shots of the original vaccineRegular booster shots should be taken.

According to a federal official, the goal is to get rid of the original vaccines. Instead, an approach similar to the flu shot will be used. Annually-updated shots will be administered to match the strain predicted to be most common. spoke to NPR Unter dem Vorbehalt der Anonymität.

Contrary to the original method, where the person must be provided with the two initial shots The original vaccine was administered in spring followed by booster shots. However, changes have been made to ensure that the person receives the most recent version of the vaccine in fall. This is similar to the administration and formulation of the flu vaccine.

The response from immunologists and vaccine researchers who spoke to NPR has been mixed, with some arguing that because of such low demand for, and widespread skepticism Despite the fact that the boosters have been updated, the public’s desire to continue their vaccinations renders the new approach ineffective.

“The public is voting with their arms if you will and said, ‘No. I’m not going to get this. This doesn’t make sense to us,'” Gregory Poland, a Mayo Clinic vaccine researcher, said:

The question is whether the bivalent boosters updated offer better protection than the original shots.

“We have no solid data about the performance of the bivalent boosters,” John Moore, an immunologist from Weill Cornell Medical College, said this. “The hard evidence is lacking, and the evidence that is out there is at the very least inconclusive and to me trends towards saying the bivalent boosters were little if no better.”

Another aspect to consider is how fast the current virus changes.

“We shouldn’t really be chasing these variants, which are evanescent and are often gone by the time you’ve created the vaccine,” says Dr. Paul Offit of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the FDA’s advisers, who also questions whether everyone will need boosters or just those at high risk of severe infection.

Dr. Eric Rubin, a Harvard professor and another member of the FDA’s advisory committee, says the administration needs to require more proof that the updated vaccines are actually reducing the risk of getting infected, getting sick, hospitalized and dying.

“I think we need to raise the bar and require more evidence of clinical efficacy,” Rubin.

The FDA could offer a plan to acknowledge that the world may finally be moving towards a more predictable coexistence with the virus. This is much like how we live with the flu or cold viruses.

“As far as the tools that we have right now, I think it just makes the most sense to plan to update each year as close as we can to the currently circulating variant,” Deepta Bhattacharya is an immunologist. “So I think all the things the FDA is considering make a lot of sense.”

Thursday’s meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is for discussion about the future of Covid-19 and voting on possible changes.