CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Changes could be coming to the next round of COVID-19 booster shots. Thursday, an FDA Advisory Panel recommended modifying the shots to target the highly contagious omicron variant.
Current COVID-19 metrics are slowly trending down in North Carolina and Mecklenburg County. On Friday, the county shifted back into the CDC’s low COVID-19 community level.
But officials are closely looking at what could be coming.
“It’s concerning that our fall surge is going to start a little earlier than expected,” Dr. Raynard Washington, the Mecklenburg County health director said.
According to the CDC, those variants made up about 52% of all new COVID-19 cases in the country last week. The latest data out of North Carolina shows BA.4 makes up 14% of the tests sequenced while BA.5 makes up 25%.
Doctors say these subvariants could lead to the next surge because the current vaccines don’t offer as much protection against them.
“They are taking over from the BA.2 subvariants of omicron that have been the driver for a lot of our infections recently. The only way that a new subvariant takes over is if it does have an advantage like less vaccine protection,” Dr. Zack Moore, the state’s epidemiologist said.
These trends pushed the FDA advisory panel to discuss the formulation of the next round of booster shots. They recommended targeting the more contagious variants to prevent more severe outcomes.
“The bottom line, the vaccines are still effective against all the circulating variants are likely to be hopefully even more effective with the changes coming with the vaccines for fall,” Moore said.
Officials are anticipating the next round of boosters will be given in October.
Officials with Pfizer and Moderna have said they’ll need about 90 days to manufacture the shots.
Contact Chloe Leshner at cleshner@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.