Dr. Peter Marks, head of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said that fully vaccinated Americans will likely need an additional COVID-19 vaccine booster dose this fall.
Earlier in the week, the FDA authorized a second booster dose for people over the age of 50. The agency also authorized a booster dose of Pfizer's vaccine for people over 12 with weakened immune systems. In addition, a second booster dose of Moderna's vaccine was authorized for people over 18 who are immunocompromised.
Marks said that by the fall, people currently eligible for a second booster shot could require a third, and those who only received one booster shot will likely need to get the second. He cited the highly-contagious Omicron subvariant BA.2, which is now the dominant strain in the United States, and suggested that we may need vaccines tailored to protect against the variants.
"It would not be surprising if there is a potential need for people to get an additional booster in the fall along with a more general booster campaign if that takes place," Marks said during a conference call with reporters. "It may be that a decision is made that rather than the vaccines we currently have, which are called vaccines against the prototype virus, that we will move to a vaccine that is either against one of the variants or something else."