In a discussion with Health Day Now, communicable diseases specialists claimed that the empirical proof for vaccinations is lacking and that those dosages will be best spent in the forearms of the uninfected all around the globe to avoid new COVID mutation.
President Joe Biden’s attempt to making COVID-19 booster doses accessible later this month has sparked the outrage of All us and foreign health professionals.
Experts Argue Against The Need For COVID Booster Doses
“The important thing to remember is this is being driven by the unvaccinated. That’s what’s in the hospital right now. It’s not vaccinated people that are the issue in this pandemic,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
“The whole debate over boosters needs to be framed by that because putting third doses into highly vaccinated populations isn’t going to change what’s happening in the United States.”
Though they say it is not required, there are experts who favor it for those who suffer from some severe medical conditions that affect immunity. People who suffer from diabetes or cancer need to have a booster shot to have effective protection from the virus.
According to Dr. Camille Kotton, an immunologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, the Biden Administration’s endorsement for vaccinations has caused a hurry by some Americans to have a third dosage though the extra jabs have not been accepted by federal regulators.
“I will say that I’m shocked at the number of people that have gone out and just helped themselves to booster doses,” Kotton said. “It’s a little bit greedy to do something that’s not really recommended yet, just because they’ve read the newspaper and thought that was a good idea for themselves.”
Last month, Biden assured the country that booster injections for the first COVID-19 vaccination users will be accessible the week of Sept. 20, although he noted that the scheme was still awaiting approval from the US Food and Drug Administration and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The longer this virus is unchecked anywhere in the world, the more likely we are to see variants. Until we control this pandemic in all corners of the globe, we’re still going to have variants,” Adalja said. “The way we control this pandemic is by getting first doses, second doses into people’s arms all around the world, even in the United States.”
Both Kotton and Adalja stated that the empirical proof does not appear to justify this need for booster doses in completely immunized people at the moment.
“Really what we’re seeing is higher rates of breakthrough disease, which is still generally mild symptoms,” said Kotton, who serves on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the board that will review booster shots prior to their approval. “People aren’t going to the hospital the vast majority of the time. They just have a little bit of a viral syndrome.”
The American College of Immunology has authorized a third dosage of vaccination for those with impaired immunological systems, but it is not a booster, according to Kotton. Immunocompromised persons will instead get a three-dose vaccination series instead of a two-dose series.
“Primarily we’ve been trying to prevent this virus from causing severe disease, hospitalization, and death,” Adalja said. “By that standard, the vaccines even when you see antibody levels wane or you see breakthrough infections occurring—they’re still performing off the charts because that’s what they were designed to do.”
“I would really not recommend that people do that of their own accord until such time as we have good scientific evidence to support that,” Kotton said.
