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A Food and Drug Administration panel is set to vote Thursday on what could be a major shift in strategy when it comes to COVID-19 vaccinations.
The plan being considered would have the agency simplify the current process and recommend one shot per year, similar to flu vaccines.
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In briefing documents released Monday, the FDA said in part on the simplified process, “Multiple COVID-19 vaccine compositions and immunization schedules have been authorized or approved in the U.S., complicating vaccine administration, communication, and uptake. An approach to both simplifying the immunization schedule and periodically updating the composition of COVID-19 vaccines as needed, requires consideration.”
The document also said the simplified schedule would help vaccinations overall and have less complex communication when it comes to who should receive the vaccine.
The panel will also consider retiring the original vaccines and offer only the updated shots from Pfizer and Moderna, the bivalent mRNA boosters. These boosters are designed to target the original strain of COVID-19, as well as the omicron subvariants.
The updated doses are known as “bivalent” vaccines. According to the FDA, they “contain two messenger RNA (mRNA) components of SARS-CoV-2 virus: one of the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and the other one in common between the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.”
It is also considering in its proposed simplified schedule that young children and older adults would be the ones to receive a two-dose series while the rest of the general population would receive one.
“In age and risk groups presumed to have ‘insufficient preexisting immunity,’ two doses of an approved or authorized COVID-19 vaccine may be needed to induce the expected protective immunity for the desired duration,” the documents said.
Some advisors are warning there is little research to support the plan.
However, the Florida Department of Health has completely different guidelines and doesn’t recommend mRNA shots for any man under 40 or any healthy children, saying the potential side effects outweigh the possible benefits.
VRBPAC 01.26.23 Meeting Briefing Document FDA by News 6 WKMG-TV on Scribd