The next round of COVID-19 vaccines will target one of the latest versions of the coronavirus, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday.
FDA’s decision came one day after an agency panel of outside advisers supported the recipe change. The agency told vaccine makers to provide protection against just one omicron strain, known as XBB.1.5.
Today’s shots include the original coronavirus and an earlier version of omicron. They do still help prevent severe disease and death even as XBB variants have taken over. But protection gradually wanes over time and was short-lived against milder infection even before the virus, inevitably, evolved again.