HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — The Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccine Advisory Committee is meetingon Thursday to discuss the future of COVID-19 vaccinations.
“FDA is trying to have a discussion around how are we going to continue to vaccinate specifically for coronavirus,” said Dr. Jill Roberts, Associate Professor for the USF College of Public Health.
That’s one of the main questions on the table a the FDA’s vaccine advisory meeting Thursday.
“Unfortunately, the uptick of the bivalent vaccine has been very low. Which suggests there hasn’t been great interest in it,” said Roberts.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report only 15.3% of people who are eligible got the new COVID-19 booster.
“There’s multiple reasons for why that is, including vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, the schedule is way too confusing. People don’t understand when they’re actually eligible or not,” said Roberts.
That’s part of the discussion vaccine advisers will have Thursday.
According to the FDA, the ongoing pandemic continues to present an extraordinary challenge to global health, complicated by rapidly evolving strains.
The lack of vaccinations only makes it that much more difficult.
“We’ll see what they talk about. I’m sure they’re thinking about different ways of providing protection, especially to the most vulnerable people,” said Dr. Michael Teng, Virologist and Associate Professor for USF Health.
The advisory committee will consider questions about simplifying the vaccine schedule and identifying a process for updating the vaccine recipe as new variants emerge.
"There’s been some discussion about should we actually move this to an annual vaccination schedule? Where we actually boost coronavirus just like we do influenza on a year-by-year basis,” said Roberts.
However, some experts wonder if an annual vacation schedule would even be enough to encourage more vaccinations.
“I think it’s a model that we have done, and it’s relatively successful. I think flu shot uptick is still not that great either,” said Teng.
“What I would prefer to see from the FDA is some sort of more like a new model. Something different than what we’ve been doing all the time," he added.
According to FDA documents, advisors will discuss several options, like a yearly vaccine and requiring more doses for young kids, older people, and those who are immunocompromised.
Either way, public health experts said they have to find a better way to vaccinate more people as we move forward.
“We’re getting to the point where it’s normal to accept that 200-400 people a day are dying from COVID, but we don’t think about it anymore because we’re kind of numb to it. That shouldn’t be acceptable for any of us — 200-400 people that’s a large jet, 757, coming down every day. That’s a lot of people. If a plane came down every day, we would probably do something about the planes, but we don’t do anything about the virus,” said Teng.
“I don’t know what FDA will do. And so what comes out of that conversation today and how I think the scientific community reflects and reacts to that will be really very interesting,” said Roberts.
The meeting is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.