A top Food and Drug Administration official said on Tuesday that the U.S. regulators plan to change the design of COVID- 19 vaccine this fall in order to combat more recent variants of the coronaviruses and launch a booster campaign by October.
Peter Marks, Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said at a meeting of outside advisers to the regulators that the vaccines could be better matched to the circulating strain that we believe may correspond to improved vaccine effectiveness and possibly to a better durability of protection.
The committee is going to vote on a recommendation on whether to change the change later on Tuesday.
The updated shots are likely to be redesigned to fight the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, experts say. The exact composition of the retooled shots and whether they will include some of the original vaccine along with new components will be considered at the meeting.
Pfizer Inc, Moderna Inc, and Novavax Inc are scheduled to present data at the meeting. All three companies have been testing versions of their vaccines that are updated to combat the BA. A 1 Omicron variant that was circulating resulted in a huge surge in infections last winter.
Both Moderna and BioNTech said that their redesigned vaccines generate a better immune response against BA. The original virus that emerged from China was designed by their current shots that were 1 and 1 more than their current shots.
They said that their new vaccines seem to work against the more recently circulating BA. Even though the protection against BA is not as strong as in Omicron subvariants. Experts want to know if the new shots will increase protection against severe disease and death for younger, healthier people or just provide a few months' additional safeguard against mild infection.
A broad campaign is not necessary, according to scientists who have questioned the value of booster shots for young and healthy people.
Other experts have advocated for additional protection that new vaccines may offer.