But letting more people get boosted with the original vaccine now could interfere with plans to boost them with updated, hopefully more protective vaccines in the fall to blunt the toll of the winter surge.

That's why the administration is considering shifting the focus to the next generation of boosters. Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech were already scrambling to comply with the FDA's request to get new, hopefully more powerful "bivalent" boosters ready by October or November that target both the original strain of the virus and omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.

The FDA is trying to get the companies to make those shots available even sooner — possibly as soon as September, according to a federal official familiar with the situation who is not authorized to talk about it publicly. The possible shift was first reported by The Washington Post.

If the bivalent boosters can be accelerated, the FDA would skip opening up fourth shots of the original vaccines this summer and just wait for the new double-barreled omicron vaccines in the fall.

GGD wrote:
Here's my understanding of the strategy. They're hoping for earlier availability of new formulation boosters that are effective against BA.4 and BA.5, and that's the booster they want everyone to get as soon as it's available. They'd rather have people wait for the new one die now than later.