After the Food and Drug Administration abruptly canceled an advisory committee meeting tasked with recommending the composition of annual flu shots, a group of government doctors issued guidelines for vaccine makers.
The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee was scheduled to meet on March 13 to discuss the composition of the 2025-26 flu shots. Traditionally, the committee meets each winter to issue recommendations on the following season’s flu vaccines. The committee is made up of non-government experts, and their report is then considered by the FDA. In years past, the FDA has used the committee’s recommendations as part of its final guidelines for developing the annual flu shot.
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Influenza vaccines are adjusted annually to best target the most prominent strains of the virus. Vaccine manufacturers then have several months to translate these government recommendations into the following season’s flu shot.
Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the committee, was among those who were not able to weigh in on the vaccine guidelines.
“I guess the FDA has decided they don’t need an independent group of experts to help them out,” he previously told Scripps News.
The government panel, made up of doctors from the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Defense, recommended a trivalent flu vaccine for the 2025-26 season. The trivalent flu vaccine will target three different strains of the virus.
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As of the start of March, an estimated 45.8% of U.S. adults had gotten this year’s flu vaccine. While adulthood vaccinations have remained steady in recent years, the number of children getting a flu vaccines has dropped.
As of earlier this month, just 46.9% of children under age 17 have gotten vaccinated. In 2019-20, over 60% had gotten the vaccine by the start of March.
