An advisory group from the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended on Thursday to revise the formulation of COVID-19 booster doses for this year to target one of the currently prevailing variants of the (XBB) strain of the coronavirus. They stated that "the new formulations should aim to stimulate the antibody response to the (XBB 1.5) or (XBB 1.16) variants," adding that other formulations could also be considered to stimulate the neutralizing antibody response against the effects of XBB variants.
The group suggested excluding the original COVID-19 strain from future vaccines based on data indicating that the original virus is no longer spreading among humans and that vaccines targeting the strain produce "very low or undetectable levels of neutralizing antibodies" against currently prevalent variants.
