On Thursday, vaccine experts will meet to discuss updated COVID-19 boosters and make recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on who should receive the shots, one of the final steps before they are rolled out as soon as this weekend.
The FDA approved the updated shots from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna on Wednesday, which target the dominant BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants as well as the original virus.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) will vote on who should receive boosters before agency Director Rochelle Walensky makes the final decision following the meeting. In recent public statements, she has generally expressed support for a booster campaign.
The FDA approved the shots for people aged 12 and up who had a primary vaccine series or a booster shot at least two months prior.
Both the CDC and the FDA have stated that they believe the shots will help boost immunity against the virus ahead of the winter season when infections tend to rise as people spend more time indoors, where the virus is more easily transmitted.
Currently, a second booster is mostly reserved for people over the age of 50, as well as those who are immunocompromised or at high risk.
On Wednesday, FDA officials stated that they believed the retooled shots should be made available to a larger population because they may help younger people avoid long COVID, which can cause debilitating symptoms for months. Human trials for the newly authorized boosters have yet to be completed, and ACIP members are likely to raise concerns about the lack of data. The majority of the information on the redesigned boosters is derived from laboratory and animal studies.
According to Dr. Kristin Englund, an infectious disease physician at the Cleveland Clinic, waiting for more conclusive data from clinical trials could take too long.
“It would take us beyond this fall season when we expect to see an increase in infections,” Englund said.
The FDA stated in June that studies testing the shots in humans would not be required for approval, similar to how annual changes to flu vaccines are cleared.
