FDA advisers recommend COVID vaccines be updated to target current dominant variant

By Christy Santhosh

May 28 (Reuters) – The U.S. FDA’s advisory panel recommended on Thursday that COVID-19 vaccines for 2026-2027 immunization should be updated to target the dominant XFG variant, despite some staff concerns about limited data on currently circulating strains.

Eight out of nine panel members voted in favor of the recommendation, while one abstained.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization recommended COVID vaccine manufacturers target the monovalent LP.8.1 strain or other currently circulating variants such as XFG or NB.1.8.1.

For the 2025-26 season, the FDA had recommended COVID shots target LP.8.1 — a subvariant of the JN.1 strain.

“We can’t make a recommendation if we don’t have data, and that’s one of my great concerns,” said Anna Durbin, professor at Johns Hopkins University, and a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC).

She called for strengthening real-time surveillance infrastructure and suggested the committee consider convening more than once a year.

The VRBPAC has not been changed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has undercut the use of COVID and other vaccines in the U.S., but the surveillance of the disease has been scaled back as part of funding cuts.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID dashboard, new data is currently unavailable due to low sequencing submissions. The most recent update, now a month old, showed XFG strains accounted for more than half of U.S. cases over the four weeks ended April 11.

Besides, the CDC’s advisory panel vote to drop recommendations for childhood vaccines, including the COVID shot, has affected their use. A court has temporarily stayed that decision.

Four COVID shots have been approved for use in the U.S.: Moderna’s mNEXSPIKE and Spikevax, Pfizer-BioNTech’s, Comirnaty — all three mRNA-based vaccines — as well as Novavax-Sanofi’s protein-based shot that takes longer to manufacture.

In briefing documents published before the meeting, they all said they could make the updated shot in time for the 2026-2027 season.

(Reporting by Christy Santhosh in Bengaluru and Michael Erman in New York; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Shilpi Majumdar)