WASHINGTON — A panel of independent experts advising the Food and Drug Administration is set to recommend on Tuesday whether to update existing Covid-19 vaccines to target a newer version of the coronavirus in a booster shot that Americans could get in the fall.
The federal government is hoping to improve the vaccine to better boost people’s immunity before a likely resurgence of the virus this winter. But in order to move that quickly, it may need to abandon the lengthy human trials that have been used to test coronavirus vaccines over the past two years in favor of a faster process that relies more on laboratory tests and animal trials.
The most recent trials with human volunteers have taken five months, even using relatively small groups. But the virus is evolving so quickly that new vaccine formulations are out of date before such trials are even finished.