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This would be a third injection of the current two-dose vaccines Pfizer and Moderna. This announcement could slip, the source warned, but it is the current moment.
“The FDA is closely monitoring data as it becomes available from studies administering an additional dose of authorized COVID-19 vaccines to immunocompromised people,” an FDA spokesperson told CNN. “The agency, along with the CDC, is evaluating potential options on this issue and will share information in the near future.”
The FDA must authorize the vaccines for use in new ways outside of the existing authorization. The three Covid-19 vaccines used in the United States are given under emergency use authorization by the FDA, but full approval is pending for Pfizer’s vaccine. Once the FDA grants approval or clearance, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then advises whether or not to use a vaccine as authorized by the FDA.
CDC vaccine advisers will meet on Friday to discuss booster doses for Covid-19 vaccines and additional doses for some immunocompromised people, according to a meeting agenda released by the agency on Monday.
A recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins found that immunocompromised people vaccinated are 485 times more likely to end up in hospital or die from Covid-19 compared to the general population vaccinated.
It has been known for months that Covid-19 vaccines may not work well for this group. The hope was that vaccination rates overall would be so high that the “herd” would protect them.
But it didn’t work that way, as about a third of eligible people in the United States haven’t even received a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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