According to a person familiar with the preparations, health officials in the Biden administration are likely to suggest COVID-19 booster doses for all Americans who got the Pfizer or Moderna vaccinations, regardless of age, eight months after they received the second shot. According to reports, the announcement would be made within days after the outbreak of the delta type of influenza. It also comes amid concerns regarding the fading protection of the Pfizer vaccine and FDA’s approval for the booster vaccinations for immunocompromised ones.
The official talked to USA TODAY on the condition of anonymity because he or she was not allowed to speak openly about the situation. Booster injections will initiate when the FDA allows the vaccinations, which may be as early as mid-to-late September. The Pfizer injection is likely to be the subject of legal action in the coming weeks. No one other than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may suggest booster shots as long as any of the vaccinations are distributed under an emergency use authorization.
The Biden Administration Would Prescribe COVID-19 Booster Injections For Pfizer And Moderna Vaccines
According to Dr. Eric Topol, vice president for research at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, and a national authority on the use of data in medical research, the shift results from data provided by organizations such as Israel and the Mayo Clinic, among others.
According to data released by Israel’s Ministry of Health, protection from the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine fell dramatically after six months, with efficacy against infection dropping to 40-50 percent, he added. The vaccination was still very effective against severe sickness and death, but it was ineffective against the milder COVID-19 strains tested.
In his opinion, there is still a danger for long-term COVID infection, and individuals may get very sick from the symptomatic infections, which should not be overlooked. According to him, reports from Qatar and the Mayo Clinic also indicate the same result.
He also said that its efficacy has dropped to the 40 – 50 percent level, while it was about 95 percent in the past. It is not known why the mRNA vaccines turned out to be less effective with time, but Topol thinks it is most likely due to the short dosage schedule that the United States selected in the first place.
For the Pfizer injections, the two-dose vaccination series was given three weeks apart, while for the Moderna shots, the series was administered four weeks apart. Because that was the available data, the United States adopted the spacing that Modernaand Pfizer used in the studies. It is possible that the short period prevented the development of memory B and T cells in the body as effectively as they would have done if the gap had been longer.
Topol believes that this would not have occurred if the intervals had been eight to twelve weeks apart. The governments of Canada, the United Kingdom, and Scotland all took this approach. Adding booster injections raises complex moral issues at a time when the globe is still being devastated by COVID-19, and only a few nations have access to adequate vaccines to protect their citizens. Given this global inequality, the fact that Americans are receiving a third dosage when so many others are not is concerning.
Dr. William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has suggested that the United States contribute doses for each of the booster dosages that is administered. According to him, he would love to see the Biden administration declare that they would contribute ten doses for every booster dosage that they provide. It demonstrates that they recognize that there is a problem here and that this is the method by which they want to resolve it.
