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For: The opinion Posted 23 Jan 2023, 19:40 pm EST
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisers will meet Thursday to discuss streamlining the COVID vaccination schedule, allowing most people receive the currently available booster, regardless of how many doses they received before.
Currently, everyone over the age of 6 months must complete a primary vaccination series. (at least two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Novavax vaccines or a single dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine) before they can get a booster dose, two months later.
Nevertheless, FDA proposes to skip requirement, meaning most unvaccinated people could go ahead and receive the last booster shot if they decide to get vaccinated against COVID.
However, some groups would be advised to receive two doses, according to the information documents. These include older adults, immunosuppressed people, and children 2 years of age and younger.
The FDA’s proposal, experts say, would greatly simplify the COVID vaccination schedule in the United Statesaligning it more closely with the annual flu shot.
In another similarity to the flu vaccine, the FDA is considering whether the Covid vaccine should be updated at least once a year, depending on which strains are in circulation.
The agency’s proposals will go before its Vaccines and Related Biologicals Advisory Committee on Thursday.
The committee will also discuss whether the primary series should be changed to the updated bivalent formulation used in the new booster shots. Those injections, licensed in the fall, offer protection against the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, as well as the original strain of the coronavirus that was identified in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. The vaccines used in the primary series are only directed at the original strain.
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