The Current COVID-19 Booster-Shot Strategy is Not Sustainable, Says FDA ’s Expert Panel

While the currently available COVID-19 vaccines remain effective in protecting people from serious disease, public health experts still face a handful of important questions about the shots and their ability to continue to protect against the virus in coming years. Will a new version of the vaccine be more effective? How long does protection last? Are boosters the only way to extend that protection? Is there a better, more coordinated way to give vaccines and boosters to maximize immunity in the face of an ever-changing virus? Those were the discussion topics that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee addressed in a day-long virtual meeting on April 6. The 28-member committee of independent experts reviewed the available data on vaccine effectiveness and tried to lay the foundation for maximizing the effect of vaccines in curbing COVID-19. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Because public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and regulators at the FDA are still learning about how the virus works, and what type of immunity is needed to control it, the U.S.’s vaccination strategy has relied on a game of catch-up: chasing after waves of infections first with the primary vaccinations and then with booster doses to keep those waves from cresting and overwhelming the health care system with sick patients. For now, the vaccination schedule is a complicated algorithm d...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news