TAMPA, Fla. — Health officials expect the FDA to green-light the updated COVID-19 boosters in the coming days.
“I want to point out that this is going to be different than what we saw in the past,” said Dr. Jill Roberts, Associate Professor for the USF College of Public Health.
The new shots will no longer be bivalent.
“So the old vaccine actually had the original strain in it, and then it had a variant that was interesting, the BA.5 and BA.6,” said Roberts.
Over time, the virus has mutated, and those strains aren’t relevant anymore.
“The new vaccine is going to be monovalent; it has only one strain in it,” said Roberts.
“This year, they chose the XBB variant as the variant for COVID,” said Dr. Doug Ross, Chief Medical Officer for AdventHealth Tampa.
The new shots will target the XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant.
Health officials believe boosting against this strain will offer protection for all currently circulating mutations, which are all closely related.
It remains to be seen who officials will recommend should receive the updated booster.
Doctors believe, at minimum, it will be for our most vulnerable populations.
“If you’re in a high-risk group, this should be a no-brainer. You absolutely want to get this vaccine when it comes out,” said Roberts.
“Boosting is important certainly for people 65 years and older. The frailer, the more important it is, and immunocompromised, no question,” said Ross.
Regardless of who vaccine advisers recommend gets this new shot, doctors believe it will continue to play a big part in preventing severe disease.
“We know that the vaccines are not preventing people from getting cases, right, from getting sick. It is highly unlikely this new vaccine will prevent it either. What it will do, though is prevent those hospitalizations from going up and those deaths from going up,” said Roberts.
After the FDA signs off on these vaccines, the CDC’s vaccine advisers will issue their own recommendations.
“The ACIP is the group that takes the vaccine that’s been approved and then tells us how we’re supposed to use it. So they say, who do we give it to, who’s the high-risk groups, how much do we give it, how frequently do we give it? That’s all ACIP,” said Roberts.
The CDC’s ACIP is scheduled to meet on Tuesday.