The FDA experts agreed that boosting Americans every few months was not sustainable.
WASHINGTON - More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. health officials are beginning to grapple with how to keep the vaccines updated to best protect Americans from the ever-changing coronavirus.
But the FDA’s vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks acknowledged at the meeting “we simply can’t be boosting people as frequently as we are.” He called the latest booster update a “stopgap” measure to protect vulnerable Americans while regulators decide whether and how to tweak the current vaccines. “We need to focus on the worst case, which is severe disease, and we need to change strains when we’re losing that battle,” said Dr. Mark Sawyer of the University of California, San Diego.During the last omicron-driven surge, two vaccine doses were nearly 80% effective against needing a breathing machine or death — and a booster pushed that protection to 94%, federal scientists recently reported.
Presentations at the meeting by government health officials and independent researchers underscored the challenges of predicting when the next major COVID-19 variant might appear.
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