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So the covid vaccine is going in the direction of the flu vaccine: it’s about to become an annual thing. The FDA just proposed that the covid vaccine move to a schedule like the flu vaccine: given out once a year in the fall/winter before seasonal surges. People will only need one dose to be immune for a while, and the FDA hopes this change will make things easier for everyone. The FDA also said it would retire the original vaccine starting in 2020 and only use newer iterations that include protection against the omicron variant.
The Food and Drug Administration has announced new changes to how COVID-19 vaccines may be administered in the future.
On Monday, the agency released a briefing paper proposing that the COVID vaccine move to an annual vaccine before the winter months when the virus would be most dominant – similar to the strategy used when administering the vaccine against flu.
Individuals would only need one dose of the vaccine to “restore protective immunity for a period of time”. The change was proposed in the hopes of simplifying the process for the public and manufacturers and minimizing physician errors.
“This simplification of vaccine composition should reduce complexity, reduce errors in administering the vaccine due to the complexity of the number of different vial presentations, and potentially increase vaccine compliance by allowing for clearer communication,” says the information document.
The agency also announced that it plans to withdraw the original vaccine, which was first released in late 2020, and only use doses from Moderna and Pfizer that both protect against the original strain. of COVID and the omicron variant.
We kind of suspected that would happen, that covid would soon be treated more like the flu. So good to see it confirmed. Not everyone will get the vaccine, just like not everyone will get the flu shot, but hopefully we’ve reached the point where covid is largely manageable, if not completely preventable. People are always going to act in their own best interests, but hopefully this new shift from a vaccine to an annual vaccine like the flu shot will convince some resisters. After almost three years, covid finally caught me in December, just a month after I received my second reminder. I had mild versions of literally every symptom except shortness of breath, so I lay down for a week, but it probably would have been a lot worse if I hadn’t been double vaxxed and boosted. Fortunately, the rates of this disease and other respiratory diseases are finally coming down after winter. Hopefully this schedule change will make things easier, convince some resisters, and bring us back to something closer to normal.