New FDA proposal hopes to increase COVID-19 vaccination rate

BY LILY BENN ’26 STAFF WRITER

On Jan. 26, 2023, the Food and Drug Administration of the United States held a meeting to discuss future plans for public health and the administration of COVID-19 vaccines. According to PBS NewsHour, the committee of 21 FDA members voted unanimously to approve the strategy of implementing an annual COVID-19 vaccination, allowing for people of all vaccination statuses to be vaccinated every year.

This new system would no longer be dependent on keeping track of the number of primary vaccinations and boosters an individual has received, an article from AP News explains. The online committee meeting included information from an immunologist, Matthew Woodruff, who studies and publishes research on immune responses to COVID-19.

The AP News article goes on to state that while over 80 percent of Americans are vaccinated against

COVID-19 with at least one dose, the newest Omicron variant booster approved in August 2022 has only reached about 16 percent of those eligible.

As boosters become less popular among Americans, FDA scientists have supported a transition to an annual vaccination model, citing that many Americans have preexisting immunity from COVID-19 due to previous vaccination, infection or both.

A news broadcast from WKMG News

6 ClickOrlando by Julie Broughton explains this news, but reports on counterpoints such as “critics” who believe that not enough data exists to sufficiently explain the higher immunity that the FDA has been using to back this new annual vaccination proposal.

This new system would go into effect once approved and backed by the Center for Disease Control, according to an article from PBS NewsHour. This new vaccine would likely be bivalent — or target multiple strains — as COVID-19 evolves.

Thus, it would be able to target both the current dominant variant, Omicron, and further strains. Similar to the widely recognized influenza vaccine, it would be reevaluated each year and changed to target new mutations of the spike protein, the article explains.

According to a timeline put out by Mayo Clinic, vaccines targeting various influenza viruses have had a similar history, where pandemics and outbreaks led to widely recognized annual vaccines recommended for the general public. Influenza pandemics occurred in 1918, 1957 and 1958, 1968, the 1970s, and 2009, according to Mayo Clinic. The first introduction of an influenza vaccine recommendation was made in 1960 by the U.S. Public Health Service for people who were at high risk of influenza complications.

By 1968, researchers began the development of specific influenza strain vaccines as a new pandemic spread.

The article cites that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a part of the CDC, introduced a recommendation in 2010 that all people aged 6 months and older be vaccinated against influenza annually. By 2019 and 2020, Mayo Clinic reports that annual influenza vaccines have prevented about 7.5 million infections and illnesses.

According to AP News, the FDA hopes that their new vaccine implementation strategy will increase vaccination rates worldwide, as this strategy would both simplify information and increase health for the general public.

Greta Thunberg among protesters arrested at the site of a German coal mine

began giving speeches to protest inaction against climate change,” the article said.

Thunberg inspired students worldwide to protest in their communities, leading to the development of “a school climate strike movement called Fridays for Future,” which went on to include multi-city protests in which more than one million students participated.

According to Context news, Thunberg’s work led to her being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. In the same year, she was named “one of the world’s most influential people by Time magazine.”

According to Context, Thunberg responded with a tweet that read “Now I am speaking to the whole world.” manity to charity. Additionally, she has donated about $120,000 to the WHO foundation to support the vaccine-sharing plan, Context reported.

Her work towards fighting for environmentalist causes has continued, most recently with her protest of the Lützerath coal mine.

According to CBS news, Thunberg was first detained by the German police on Jan. 13, 2023. CBS reported that “Thunberg was near the German village of Lützerath, where an energy company is seeking to demolish the remains of what they say is an abandoned town to make way for the mine’s expansion.”

BY DIKSHA BATRA ’26 STAFF WRITER

Over the last month, Greta Thunberg has been arrested twice for protesting the expansion of a coal mine in the German village of Lützerath, according to CNN. Most recently, she was arrested on Tuesday, Jan. 17. A spokesperson for the German police told CNN that “Thunberg had been the main speaker at the rally on Saturday and had ‘surprisingly’ returned to protest on Sunday when she was detained the first time and then again on Tuesday.”

Greta Thunberg is a 20-year-old environmental activist from Stockholm, Sweden. After learning about the issue of climate change in 2011 at age eight, “Thunberg successfully urged her parents to change their lifestyle to lower the family’s carbon footprint, such as adopting veganism and ending plane travel,” according to an article from Iowa State University.

Thunberg started her career in late 2018 when she “demonstrated outside the Swedish parliament and

Her work has awarded her with many honors, including titles and money. However, Thunberg donates all money she wins from prizes to different organizations.

According to Context news, Thunberg donated “a $100,000 award she received to UNICEF to buy soap, masks and gloves to protect children from the coronavirus pandemic” in April 2020. In July 2020, she donated the $1 million in prize money from the Gulbenkian Prize for Hu-

Video recorded by Reuters shows police officers picking Thunberg up and carrying her by her arms and legs away from the sit-in.

According to CNN, many activists have been in Lützerath for more than two years, “occupying the homes abandoned by former residents after they were evicted, most by 2017, to make way for the lignite coal mine.”

Lützerath has been the center of

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