Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee is meeting this Thursday to discuss further guidance going forward in regards to the COVID-19 vaccine.
The FDA is looking to simplify the vaccination process, with plans to assess current circulating COVID strains on an annual basis and select those strains for the fall season, similar to how they update flu vaccines. You can read the briefing document for the meeting here.
"I think what will be better is if in this meeting, they talk about risk-based decision making, not one size fits all. [For example,] saying this person is in this risk group, that means they get boosted this frequency or this person is in distress group they get they don't need boosters, something like that, where we're kind of targeting it towards people's risk," said Dr. Ahmesh Adalja, Infectious Disease Physician at the Johns Hopkins Center on WBEN Tuesday morning.
Dr. Adalja compares this to the flu vaccines, "If it's your first flu vaccine, you get two doses when you're a child. If you're above 65, you get one of the special formulations for older adults. I think that's what we sort of need to get to, not just one size fits all and we'll see there's a lot of people on the committee for the FDA that have really strong opinions on this and hopefully it'll be a robust discussion."
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The FDA briefing does not make mention of how many strains this potential annual vaccine could contain, the current influenza vaccine immunizes patients from four strains.
See the player below for the full remarks of Dr. Amesh Adalja: