The Food and Drug Administration held a closed-door meeting March 13 with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense to choose strains for next year’s flu vaccine. The Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, who typically make recommendations for flu vaccine strains, initially had its March 13 meeting canceled by the FDA. University of Wisconsin experts said they worry about the signal it sends to the public.
Professor and virology researcher Thomas Friedrich said he was happy the FDA said a vaccine would be available, but was critical of the decision.
“I think it shows that things are not normal,” Friedrich said. “I think the entire scientific and public health enterprise is concerned that this move will undermine public confidence in vaccines.”
The VRBPAC is composed of experts from hospitals, universities and health agencies. They are tasked with reviewing vaccine and biological products for safety and how they should be administered, making recommendations to the FDA commissioner, according to the FDA. The meetings for choosing flu vaccine strains occur in early March annually.
The FDA gave no details about why the meeting was canceled. The FDA commissioner typically approves the strains chosen by the VRBPAC and the CDC recommends the number of vaccines manufacturers should create, according to Time. The VRBPAC typically aligns with the WHO recommendations, which were released Feb. 28.
Professor of population health sciences Ajay Sethi said the process for producing the vaccine is already approved and requires constant communication between vaccine manufacturers and the FDA for quality assurance during the process of creating vaccines, he said.
This year’s flu season has had the lowest vaccination rate since at least the 2017-18 season. The CDC estimates between 23,000 and 120,000 people have died from the flu and hospitalizations are between 540,000 and 1.2 million. Last season the estimates were 28,000 deaths and 470,000 hospitalizations respectively, according to the CDC.
Flu vaccine doses administered are lower in comparison to recent years, with only 147 million doses administered by the middle of February compared to 157 million last year and 173 million in the 2022-23 season, according to the CDC. The CDC estimates the vaccine is performing similarly compared to previous years in lowering the risk of hospitalization and death drastically.
Sethi said flu vaccine uptake — the number of people who received a specified vaccine dose — is still high in older people and young children and remains low among college students. Students attempting to treat symptoms and remain active in social life do themselves and others no favors, he said.
“As long as flu is spread from person to person, it stays in our community and at some point that virus will make its way to somebody who’s more vulnerable for hospitalization or death,” Sethi said. “College students may fare better themselves but we’re all part of our community.”
