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The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday is asking an expert advisory panel to consider how often people should be boosted against COVID-19 and what those boosters should look like.
The Biden administration has already recommended that healthy young people get annual COVID-19 boosters, just as they get an annual flu shot.
The FDA is looking for the experts’ take on that recommendation, as well as providing twice-annual boosters for people who are immune-compromised or over a certain age to increase their chances of avoiding a potentially dangerous infection.
In an all-day meeting Thursday, which will be webcast live, the committee will also consider simplifying the composition of vaccines and developing a process of selecting variants to be targeted with each round of shots.
Any recommendations made by the committee will have to be ratified by the FDA commissioner and then considered by an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its director.
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Here are the key issues the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee will discuss:
The Biden administration, vaccine manufacturers and at least one modeling study suggest that annual fall boosters will help prevent severe disease and minimize the spread of the virus.
Neil Maniar, a professor of public health practice at Northeastern University in Boston, thinks that’s a good idea. Many Americans have skipped boosters because they were unsure whether they were eligible. A simplified schedule, he said, “will increase vaccination rates because it will hopefully make it easier for people to follow.”
But there is little real-world data to show that young, otherwise healthy people who’ve had at least three exposures to the virus – through vaccination or infection – would benefit from additional shots.
“If you’re over 60, absolutely, you need to stay up to date” on boosters, said Dr. Carlos del Rio, president of the Infectious Disease Society of America, on Tuesday during a call with media.
For someone who is under 50 and has been vaccinated and infected, “there’s really not this huge need to be up to date,” he said.
Vaccines will never prevent all cases of COVID-19, noted Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the VRBPAC and a pediatrician who directs the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Protection against severe disease and death seems to be remaining strong among the young and healthy who’ve been triply vaccinated, or vaccinated and infected, he said.
Healthy young people might eventually need boosters to prevent severe disease, but Offit said he hasn’t seen data to convince him the time is now.
