Another Booster? A Vaccine for Omicron? Here's What Could Be Next For COVID Vaccines: NPR
- NPR, April 4, 2022.
Most vaccinated people will probably require yet another COVID-19 vaccine booster shot in the fall, a top Food and Drug Administration official said Monday. "That's when we'll probably have a fair amount of waning immunity in combination with likely further evolution of the virus, along with people going back inside," where the coronavirus spreads more easily, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told NPR in an interview.
Marks says the U.S. must start planning now for whether everyone needs another shot and, if so, what kind of shot exactly. "We could basically wait until another wave comes along and then try to make another vaccine and try to deal with it, but I think we know that doesn't work, because we can't manufacture and deploy vaccine fast enough," Marks says.
The FDA is convening a special meeting of the agency's independent outside advisers on Wednesday for a daylong meeting to begin to plan the next round of boosters. The meeting comes about a week after the agency authorized a fourth shot — a second booster — for anyone age 50 or older to shore up immunity ahead of a possible new surge sooner than the fall. A more contagious omicron subvariant known as BA.2, which has fueled surges in other countries, is now dominant in the U.S., raising fears of another surge.
The tricky part of determining what do in the fall is determining what version of the coronavirus will be dominant by then, Marks says. It could be the omicron variant, but it could also be an entirely new variant. That raises doubts about just giving people a fifth shot of the current vaccine, he says...
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https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/04/04/1090912213/another-booster-a-vaccine-for-omicron-heres-what-could-be-next-for-covid-vaccine
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