US could speed up Covid vaccinations by giving two half-doses of Moderna vaccine

The head of the federal Covid-19 vaccination program said on Sunday that health officials were exploring the idea of ​​giving a large group of Americans half-volume doses of a vaccine to speed up deployment .

Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that one way to speed up vaccinations against Covid-19 was to give two half-doses of Moderna vaccine to some people.

“We know that for the Moderna vaccine, giving half the dose to people aged 18 to 55 – two doses, half the dose, which means exactly meeting the goal of vaccinating twice the number of people with the doses we have – we know it induces an immune response identical to the dose of 100 micrograms, ”Slaoui said.

“And therefore, we are in talks with Moderna and with the FDA – of course, ultimately it will be a decision by the FDA – to speed up the injection to half the volume,” he added. .

The comments came in response to a question about why the United States was not using the strategy of delivering all doses of vaccine available now, even though approved vaccines require a second round of vaccines to be fully effective. The UK has taken this approach, with the expectation that continued production will lead to second shots in the future.

Slaoui said he thought it would be a mistake to make a decision that was not supported by the trial data. White House health adviser Dr Anthony Fauci made similar comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier Sunday, saying the strategy “goes against the science” and would not solve the problems. problems facing the US deployment.

“The whole idea of ​​stretching it out so you can have more people is if you don’t have enough vaccines and a lot of people are waiting to get vaccinated,” Fauci said. “It’s not our problem now. We have a vaccine. We have to put it in people’s arms. It really is the right solution to the wrong problem.”

The FDA and Moderna did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The argument over the different vaccination approaches comes as the US deployment of the vaccine has failed to meet Operation Warp Speed ​​goals and the pandemic continues to ravage the country. President Donald Trump blamed states for the slow rollout because fewer vaccines are administered than the number shipped and delivered.

Health officials aimed to inject 20 million Americans with a vaccine by the end of the year. However, only about 4.2 million had received vaccines as of January 2, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The latest seven-day average for new coronavirus cases in the United States is 205,093, according to John Hopkins University. That figure is up 8% week-on-week, although testing and reporting tended to be inconsistent over the holidays. The country is also averaging more than 2,600 deaths a day attributed to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins.