The COVID-19 vaccine strategy may be shifting toward Americans getting yearly vaccinations, like many do with annual flu shots.
The new COVID boosters rolling out this month represent a shift in strategy, said White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha during a press briefing. The goal now will likely be to roll out new boosters annually. Going forward, COVID-19 could be treated more like the flu, with one annual shot offering year-long protection against severe illness for most people.
These vaccines could be tweaked again if new variants become dominant in the future, which is how the flu shot works. Jha cautioned that older people and those with health problems that make them more vulnerable to severe disease may need to get boosted more often. But for most people Jha hopes this latest booster will be the last shot they need for at least another year.
"You've got to put the wild card of a way-out-of-left-field variant coming in," said White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, at the briefing. If that happens he says the recommendations may change. But,"if we continue to have an evolution sort of drifting along the BA.5 sublineage," he says the annual shot should be able to cover whatever is out there as the dominant variant.
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