Experts eye a new game plan for COVID vaccines

Experts on the advisory committee will discuss the viability of an annual COVID vaccine, similar to the flu shot.

That would require scientific models to predict how COVID will mutate. Regulators would then need to choose which strains a vaccine should target, and a central body like the World Health Organization would need to oversee changes in vaccine composition.

Manufacturers would also need considerable lead time to make potentially hundreds of millions of doses of modified vaccine.

While it’s relatively straightforward to identify flu strains and get shots into arms, the experience with COVID strains is much more limited — meaning modified vaccines would still need a rigorous review to ensure they’re safe and effective, FDA staff wrote in briefing materials for today’s meeting.