The Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on June 15 advised COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to develop vaccines with a monovalent XBB 1.5 composition in time for the fall.
XBB is a subvariant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The VRBPAC suggested manufacturers no longer factor in the original strain of the virus into the development of vaccines, citing the global dominance of the XBB descendent lineages and the high level of baseline immunity to the ancestral virus strain.
Visit the America’s Essential Hospitals coronavirus resource page for more information about the pandemic.
Contact Director of Policy Rob Nelb, MPH, at rnelb@essentialhospitals.org or 202.585.0127 with questions.