EU Regulators Back WHO’s COVID Vaccine Update Recommendation
Europe’s medicine regulators on Tuesday backed the World Health Organization’s recommendation to update the antigen composition of COVID-19 vaccines to target one of the currently dominant XBB variants ahead of the upcoming autumn vaccination campaign.
Advisory groups related to the WHO suggested that, while waiting for more data, the monovalent XBB-containing vaccines could be considered a reasonable choice and individuals at risk of progression to severe disease such as older adults should be given priority, according to European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Marco Cavaleri, EMA’s head of health threats and vaccines strategy, explained the thinking behind the choice of monovalent vaccines at a briefing on Tuesday.
“What we learned is that individuals that have been repeatedly vaccinated with the ancestral strain… already have good immunity against all the viruses that have been circulating in the past. But this immunity is not very good for what looks like is coming up next,” he said.
SOURCE: Reuters
