The Food and Drug Administration on Monday proposed moving closer to COVID-19 vaccines like the annual flu shot that many Americans get to protect against mutations in the virus.
The proposal aims to simplify future vaccination efforts.
With this strategy, most adults and children would be given a shot once a year to protect themselves from the mutating virus.
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They would no longer need to keep track of how many shots they received or how many months have passed since their last booster.
In documents posted online, FDA scientists say many Americans now have “sufficient pre-existing immunity” to the coronavirus due to vaccination, infection, or a combination of both.
Boxes of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine are prepared for shipment at the McKesson Distribution Center in Olive Branch, Mississippi on December 20, 2020. (Paul Sancya/Pool via Portal)
That baseline of protection should be enough to move to an annual booster against the latest strains in circulation, according to the agency, and make the COVID-19 shots more like the annual flu shot.
The FDA will also ask its panel to vote on whether all vaccines should target the same strains.
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This step would be necessary to make vaccinations interchangeable and to do away with the current complicated system of primary and booster vaccinations.
Pfizer and Moderna’s first shots target the strain of the virus that first emerged in 2020 and swept the globe.
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The updated boosters introduced last fall have also been tweaked to target the dominant Omicron relatives.
A patient receives a vaccine dose during a vaccination campaign against the flu. (Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belgium/AFP via Getty Images)
Under the FDA’s proposal, the agency, independent experts, and manufacturers would decide which strains to target annually by early summer, giving several months to produce and get updated recordings to market before the fall.
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This is roughly the same approach that has long been used to select strains for the annual flu shot.
More than 80% of the US population has received at least one dose of vaccine – but only 16% of those eligible have received the latest booster shots approved in August.
A nurse prepares COVID-19 vaccines in April 2022 in Waterford, Michigan. (Portal/Emily Elconin)
Ultimately, FDA officials say moving to an annual schedule would make it easier to fund future vaccination campaigns, which could increase vaccination rates nationwide.
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The FDA will ask its panel of outside vaccine experts to comment at a meeting later this week.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Bradford Betz is a red-hot reporter at Fox News Digital, covering crime, politics and more.