FDA VRBPAC to Meet April 6 to Discuss Future COVID-19 Boosters

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it will convene a virtual meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Wednesday, April 6 to discuss considerations for future COVID-19 vaccine booster doses and the process for selecting specific strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus for COVID-19 vaccines to address current and emerging variants.

Advisory committee members, as well as representatives from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), will participate in the April 6 meeting. The meeting will assist the FDA in develop a general framework that will inform its regulatory decision-making on what might warrant updating COVID-19 vaccine composition to address specific variants and timing and populations for COVID-19 vaccine booster doses in the coming months.

The FDA notes that a vote is not planned for the meeting and there will not be any discussions on product-specific applications, including booster authorization requests from Pfizer and Moderna submitted to the FDA last week.

Additional information from the FDA is available here.