Federal health advisors are scheduled to convene Thursday to determine the composition of COVID-19 vaccines for the upcoming 2026-2027 immunization period, with a focus on whether shots should target the prevalent XFG variant.
The Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee will hold the meeting and vote, with staff expressing worries about insufficient data on currently spreading virus strains.
The advisory committee will meet with its membership unchanged by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., indicating standard procedures continue following various vaccine policy changes under the health secretary.
Vaccine oversight has been in uncertainty for the past year after a court halted decisions from the CDC’s advisory panel regarding childhood vaccine recommendations, including COVID shots. The court ruled that Kennedy had not appropriately selected the panel members.
According to briefing materials published before Thursday’s session, the FDA stated that tracking COVID-19’s development has grown more challenging due to decreased virus monitoring, reduced genetic sequencing, and slower data sharing from state and local health agencies.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID tracking system shows this information gap, with weekly reports currently unavailable because of insufficient genetic sequencing submissions. The latest available data, now four weeks old, indicated XFG variants represented more than half of American cases during the four-week period ending April 11.
Jill Roberts, associate professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, explained that the decline in genetic sequencing stems from both the reduction of government monitoring personnel and decreased university research funding.
For the current 2025-26 period, the FDA had suggested COVID vaccines should focus on LP.8.1, which is a subtype of the JN.1 strain.
Although COVID variants continue evolving from the JN.1 strain, additional subtypes including NB.1.8.1 have appeared since May of last year, according to the FDA’s briefing materials.
Earlier this month, the World Health Organization advised vaccine producers to focus on the single-strain LP.8.1 variant or other presently spreading variants like XFG or NB.1.8.1.
The United States has authorized four COVID vaccines: Moderna’s mNEXSPIKE and Spikevax, Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty, with three using mRNA technology, plus Novavax-Sanofi’s protein-based vaccine that requires more time to produce.
