FDA aims for yearly Covid vaccine

Treat the mutating virus with an annual flu-shot approach, officials are urging

United States health officials want to make Covid-19 vaccinations more like the annual flu shot. The Food and Drug Administration yesterday proposed a simplified approach for future vaccination efforts, allowing most adults and children to get a once-a-year shot to protect against the mutating virus.

This means Americans would no longer have to keep track of how many shots they’ve received or how many months since their last booster.

The proposal comes as boosters have become a hard sell. While more than 80 per cent of the US population has had at least one vaccine dose, only 16 per cent of those eligible have received the latest boosters authorised in August.

The FDA will ask its panel of outside vaccine experts to weigh in at a meeting on Friday. The agency is expected to take their advice into consideration while deciding vaccine requirements for manufacturers.

In documents posted online, FDA scientists say many Americans now have sufficient pre-existing immunity against the coronavirus because of vaccination, infection or a combination of the two. That baseline of protection should be enough to move to an annual booster against the latest strains in circulation and make Covid19 vaccinations more like the yearly flu shot, according to the agency.

For adults with weakened immune systems and very small children, a two-dose combination may be needed for protection. FDA scientists and vaccine companies would study vaccination, infection rates and other data to decide who should receive which. FDA will also ask its panel to vote on whether all vaccines should target the same strains. That step would be needed to make the shots interchangeable.

The initial shots from Pfizer and Moderna — called the primary series — target the strain that first emerged in 2020 and quickly swept across the world. The updated boosters launched last year in the US were also tweaked to target Omicron relatives that had been dominant.