[weyo/Adobe Stock]
The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) is backing a significant shift in the current COVID-19 vaccine strategy: a move from multivalent to monovalent vaccines focusing on the XBB lineage strains. The advisory committee has set its sights on protecting against XBB.1.5 and has jettisoned is support for vaccines with a Wuhan component, which was included as a component of the bivalent vaccine boosters that debuted in fall 2022. “Continuing to include the original Wuhan strain was unnecessary since early strains are no longer in circulation,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, chief medical officer at the National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases.While supporting monovalent vaccines, VRBPAC members acknowledged that the predominant SARS-CoV-2 sublineages could continue to evolve. “We may well find that XBB.1.16 or XBB.2.3 become more dominant than XBB.1…