Our fall COVID boosters will likely be a monovalent XBB formula - Ars Technica

[BootinUp]

If all goes smoothly, the FDA is expecting new shots around September.
BETH MOLE - 6/15/2023, 3:01 PM

An advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday voted unanimously (21 to 0) to recommend updating COVID-19 vaccines for the 2023-2024 period to be a monovalent formula targeting the latest omicron subvariant lineage of XBB. Such an update would apply to both primary series shots as well as boosters.

The monovalent update means that the next COVID-19 vaccines will only target one version of pandemic coronaviruses. This is a switch from the current formula, which is bivalent, targeting both the spike protein from the ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain and the previous leading omicron subvariants BA.4/5 (which share a spike protein).

In Thursday's day-long meeting, advisers reviewed data suggesting that the current bivalent vaccine continues to protect from the most severe outcomes of COVID-19, but protection from infection and hospitalization wanes over time and wanes notably faster against the XBB variants. To date, only 17 percent of Americans have received a bivalent booster, meaning their protection is significantly weakened since their last dose of the original vaccine formula, which only targeted the ancestral strain.

For the update, the advisers examined data suggesting that a monovalent vaccine, rather than a bivalent, would have a better shot at protecting against the latest omicron subvariants and reduce the chances of skewing immune responses back to the ancestral strain, which no longer circulates. Since the last update to the bivalent shots, the virus has continuously evolved, coming up with new ways to try to evade immune responses built up from previous infections and vaccinations.

Its Ars Technica so of course there is much more information at the link https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/06/our-fall-covid-boosters-will-likely-be-a-monovalent-xbb-formula/