U.S. FDA aims to decide on strain selection for COVID boosters by June

April 6 (Reuters) - Top U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials on Wednesday said the agency is aiming to decide by June whether to change the design of COVID-19 vaccines in order to combat future variants, even if it does not have all the necessary information to measure their effectiveness.

"We're going to have to think about this in a way that is less than optimal because we're not going to have all the data that we'd like to have," Peter Marks, director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said at a meeting of the agency's scientific advisers to discuss the issue.

Marks also conceded that future COVID booster campaigns likely need to be less frequent. The FDA recently approved a fourth round of shots for older Americans.

"We simply can't be boosting people as frequently as we are and I'm the first to acknowledge that this additional fourth booster dose that was authorized was a stopgap measure," he said.

The panel of outside experts was convened to discuss how and whether to use additional vaccine boosters after data from Israel showed a fourth dose lowered rates of severe COVID among older people.

The FDA said it was hoping next generation vaccines would be to tackle multiple variants.

"Pivoting toward a monovalent vaccine directed at something like Omicron runs the risk of really narrowing the breadth of coverage for people who might be getting that modified vaccine as their primary series," FDA scientist Doran Fink said. ...