Surplus COVID-19 Vaccines to be Destroyed Ahead of 2023-2024 Vaccination Campaign Targeting Dominant XBB Variants

The accumulated vaccines against the coronavirus will not be used for the next campaign and this has meant that the surplus must surely be destroyed.

According to Antena3, the ideal would have been for this surplus to be donated to other countries so that they could take advantage of it, but if it is not done quickly, they will end up in the trash due to their expiration date.

The root of the problem is that the next 2023-2024 vaccination campaign should target one of the dominant XBB variants, reviewers from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Monday.

The comments were made in documents released ahead of Thursday’s meeting of the FDA’s panel of independent experts, which is expected to make recommendations on which strain should be targeted for an updated COVID-19 booster.

In May, a World Health Organization (WHO) advisory group recommended that this year’s COVID-19 booster vaccines be updated to address XBB subvariants.

Last year’s boosters of the COVID-19 vaccine in the United States included both the original strain and the omicron variant, in a shot called a bivalent. The campaign should include a monovalent vaccine directed against subvariants XBB.1.5, XBB.1.16, or XBB.2.3, according to the FDA reviewers.

XBB subvariants accounted for more than 95% of circulating virus variants in the United States as of early June 2023, FDA staff noted in their papers, and the virus trajectory suggests that XBB.1.16 could be the dominant variant. in the fall of 2023.

Studies suggest that the efficacy of the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine against omicron sublineages appears to wane over time, the staff said.

Only about 17% of people in the United States received a booster vaccine against COVID-19 in the 2022-2023 vaccination season, according to CDC data current through early May.

COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer/BioNtech, Moderna Inc, and Novavax Inc are already developing versions of their respective immunizations against XBB.1.5 and other variants currently in circulation.