The Food and Drug Administration’s panel of vaccine advisers will consider which COVID-19 strains the agency should direct manufacturers to target in the fall.
The FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet on May 28 and vote on whether vaccines should be reformulated to target XFG variants.
The FDA has for years been advising companies to update shots annually, to try to address lower and waning effectiveness, and it followed the recommendation of the advisory committee in 2025 to direct manufacturers to target a variant called LP.8.1.
In late 2025 and early 2026, Pfizer and Moderna produced vaccines targeting LP.8.1, while Novavax’s shot targeted JN.1. XFG and LP.8.1 are both JN.1 sublineages, but LP.8.1 has virtually disappeared from the country….