Can someone get their initial COVID-19 vaccine from one manufacturer and then get a booster from another? The question has intrigued medical professionals since before the first shot went into an arm—and it’s far more than an academic issue. Allowing people to mix and match COVID-19 shots could significantly improve vaccine distribution and may even offer some medical benefits.

This afternoon an advisory committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will review data from a recent National Institutes of Health study that seeks to answer the question. The preliminary results of this very small study hint that the answer may be yes.

If the FDA eventually endorses mixing brands, the decision could help nationwide vaccination efforts, says Pedro Piedra, professor of molecular virology, microbiology, and pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “At any time, a pharmaceutical company can have a manufacturing issue, whether that’s a contamination problem or a shortage of a reagent, so it’s helpful to have options,” he says.

Doctors and pharmacists would also benefit, says Robert M. Jacobson, medical director of the primary care immunization program at the Mayo Clinic. “Practitioners could just pick one brand to carry and know they could give that to anyone in the middle of their vaccine series, rather than have to turn some patients away,” he says. This would reduce waste, because more people could be inoculated from each open vial, he notes.