A federal advisory committee of outside experts is meeting Wednesday to help fashion the U.S. coronavirus vaccine strategy for the rest of the year, amid growing evidence that new variants have eroded the power of the existing vaccines.
The panel of the Food and Drug Administration is trying to determine where the United States is headed in its effort to search for reconfigured vaccines that could help better protect against new variants that have emerged over the past six months.
The meeting, which starts at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, represents a kind of transition point for the federal government, one troubled with many uncertainties. Many scientists have concluded that the existing vaccines need to be retooled to meet the evolving virus. Federal officials are anxious to figure out how to do that as soon as possible, lest the nation confront a scenario when the virus resurges in the fall and the vaccines’ defenses are depleted.
The committee will hear from a cast of luminaries, including experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization and the F.D.A.’s office of vaccine research.