A top U.S. health regulator said that asking people to frequently get Covid-19 boosters wasn’t sustainable because of vaccine fatigue and that authorities needed to develop a long-term strategy for protecting the public from the virus as it evolves.
Dr. Peter Marks, who heads the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccines division, said that last week’s authorization of a second booster dose for people 50 years and older and for people 12 and older with weakened immune systems was a stopgap.
“This is really trying to do the best we can with the knowledge we have at hand, which is something that we’ve had to do a fair amount of over the past two years as a public-health agency,” Dr. Marks on [April 6] told vaccine experts advising the agency.
The FDA, Dr. Marks said, seeks a long-term strategy for Covid-19 vaccinations, including identifying new strains requiring an updated vaccine and the scientific data needed to support authorization.
If health officials decide that a variant-specific vaccine—different from currently authorized boosters—is needed for a fall booster campaign, trials would need to start by early May to ensure that enough doses would be available, said Robert Johnson, director of medical countermeasure programs at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
