Vaccine advisors for the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously (12 to 0) Thursday to remove, “as soon as possible,” a component of annual flu shots that targets a strain of the virus that appears to have gone extinct amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The missing strain is the influenza type B Yamagata lineage (aka B/Yamagata), one of only four flu viruses targeted by annual vaccines.

There have been no confirmed detections of B/Yamagata worldwide since March 2020, when the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, erupted onto the global scene, dramatically disrupting the lives of people and other viruses everywhere.

While other strains and lineages of influenza have since rebounded and are moving back to their normal seasonal cycles, B/Yamagata is still unaccounted for.

Thus, keeping B/Yamagata in vaccines poses a risk of reintroducing the virus to people if a mishap occurs during production.

Makers of those quadrivalent vaccines still technically have licenses for trivalent formulas, an FDA official said in the meeting today.

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