ACIP pushes back on proposed policy recommendation that the same product used for the primary regimen should be used for the booster, saying risk/benefit and other considerations necessitate more flexibility afforded by 'mix and match' approach.

After US FDA authorization for additional COVID vaccine shots, the focus now shifts to CDC’s advisory committee, which may be concerned about variations in eligible populations, timing and dosing when it comes to giving a booster different from the primary vaccination series.

Practicing obstetricians who are maternal fetal-medicine specialists should make up a ‘significant proportion’ of the advisory committee at the forthcoming hearing, Covis says; CDER calls for a more ‘balanced’ panel that includes expertise in biostatistics, neonatology and epidemiology.

Despite lack of enthusiasm with immunobridging study data, the panel endorsed emergency use in certain at-risk populations, in part because it would be hard to turn down the Moderna booster when an identical EUA had been issued for Pfizer/BioNTech's mRNA vaccine.

Immune responses to a single booster dose of mRNA-1273 would be considered successfully bridged to the two-dose primary series if each of two immunobridging criteria were met, but the mRNA vaccine missed the prespecified success criteria for seroresponse rate, the FDA said.

Advisory committee unanimously endorses novel antiviral for treatment of post-transplant patients with refractory/resistant cytomegalovirus infection, and in the process rejects US FDA’s proposal to distinguish target population based upon genetic resistance.