FDA panel is considering annual COVID-19 shots, similar to flu vaccines

A panel of the Food and Drug Administration will vote Thursday on what could be a major change in strategy regarding COVID-19 vaccinations.

the The agency would have considered the plan Simplify the current process and recommend one vaccination per year, similar to flu vaccines.

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In briefing documents released Monday, the FDA said in part about the simplified procedure, “Several COVID-19 vaccine formulations and vaccination schedules have been approved or approved in the United States, complicating vaccine administration, communication and uptake. An approach to simplifying the vaccination schedule and regularly updating the composition of COVID-19 vaccines as needed needs to be considered.”

The document also said the simplified schedule would help immunizations overall and have less complex communication when it comes to who should get the vaccine.

The panel will also consider withdrawing the original vaccines and only offering the updated Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the bivalent mRNA boosters. These boosters are designed to target the original COVID-19 strain 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 the SARS-CoV-2 virus: one of the original SARS-CoV-2 strain and the other carrying the BA.4 and BA.5 Lineages in common is the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.”

It also considers in its proposed simplified schedule that young children and older adults will be the ones who will receive a two-dose series, while the rest of the general population will receive one.

“In age and risk groups thought to have ‘insufficient pre-existing immunity’, two doses of an approved or licensed COVID-19 vaccine may be required to induce the expected protective immunity for the desired duration,” it says in the documents.

Some advisors warn that there is little research to support the plan.

However, the Florida Department of Health has completely different guidelines and does not recommend mRNA shots for men under 40 or healthy children because the potential side effects outweigh the potential benefits.