FDA advisory panel to consider boosters for Moderna and J&J COVID-19 vaccines

A federal advisory committee will meet for two days this week to discuss the safety and need for a booster shot for people who already received Moderna’s or Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Members of the federal advisory panel, called the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, also will hear data about the likely safety and effectiveness of giving people booster shots from a different vaccine manufacturer than their original doses.

While presumed safe, there has been little data so far and the government has encouraged people to stick with the same vaccine.

Booster doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which has been given to more than 230 million

Americans since December, were approved last month for people over 65 as well as younger people whose medical conditions or jobs put them at higher risk for disease.

So far, people who received Moderna or J&J for their first round of shots have been told to sit tight.

Data is clearer for PfizerBioNTech, because most of Israel’s 9.2 million residents received that vaccine earlier this year and have been carefully tracked.

The country began offering booster shots to everyone this summer after data suggested vaccine protection against infection was fading. It’s not clear whether people were also more vulnerable to severe disease, but the data suggested that protection had begun to wane, too.

Qatar experienced a similar decline in effectiveness against mild and moderate disease, according to another recent study.

There is no similar nationwide “natural experiment” for either the Moderna or the J&J vaccines.

Instead, the FDA panel will have to consider during its Thursday and Friday meetings smaller-scale data, which suggests the

Moderna vaccine is following a similar, though perhaps slower, trajectory than Pfizer-BioNTech’s.

The FDA committee will also consider a new report looking at the risks and benefits of combining different vaccines.

The CDC has already said it’s preferable to get second and third doses with the same vaccine as the first dose. But the new study, though small, is expected to offer hints about whether combining different types of vaccines is safe and perhaps more effective than sticking with the same shots.