U.S. CDC Advisors Support COVID-19 Booster Injections For Seniors But Not For High-Risk Workers

A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory group on Thursday recommended a booster shot of the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for Americans 65 years of age and older and some adults with sub-health conditions. that put them at risk of serious disease.

But the panel declined to recommend recalls for young adults, including healthcare workers, who live or work in institutions at high risk of contracting COVID-19, which could narrow the scope of the authorization. US Food and Drug Administration emergency use released Wednesday.

The guidelines voted by the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices have yet to be approved by the agency’s director, Rochelle Walensky. The recommendations are not binding and states and other jurisdictions could ignore them and use other approaches to administer the booster injections.

Yet the group’s vote, following FDA clearance, paves the way for the launch of a booster rollout as early as this week for the millions who received their second dose of Pfizer at least ago. six months.

Beyond older Americans, the committee also recommended injections for all adults over 50 with underlying conditions, as well as for some 18 to 49 with these conditions, based on their profile. of individual risk. These conditions include cancer, diabetes, certain heart diseases, chronic kidney disease, and lung disorders.

The recommendations apply only to people who received their second Pfizer-BioNTech injection at least six months earlier. The CDC said that this group currently numbers around 26 million people, including 13 million who are 65 years of age or older.

The panel has so far rejected additional doses for groups including health workers, teachers and residents of homeless shelters and prisons, in part because of the difficulty of implementing such a proposal.

Panel member Lynn Bahta, who works with the Minnesota Department of Health, voted against the measure, which would have greatly increased availability. She said the data does not yet support boosters in this group. “Science shows we have a really effective vaccine,” she said.

The committee said it could review the guidelines later.

Last month, US President Joe Biden and eight senior health officials said they hoped to launch a massive booster program this week, saying emerging data showed immunity waned over time.

Vaccine expert Dr Paul Offit said he believes CDC advisers are concerned that recommending job-based boosters will lead to overly broad use, especially among young people for whom the benefits for the health of a recall is still unclear.

“It was a hole you could drive a truck into, basically what we were doing was basically what the administration (Biden) originally asked for – to just have a vaccine for the general population, because obviously pharmacists aren’t going to. not understand whether you work in a grocery store or a hospital, ”he said.

More than 180 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated, or about 64% of the eligible population.

Pfizer – and some top US health officials like Dr Anthony Fauci – have argued that the extra round of gunfire is needed to combat the decline in immunity. Fauci and others have also said they could help contain the surge in hospitalizations and deaths caused by the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus by reducing breakthrough infections of fully vaccinated people.

The recent spate of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States, mostly among the unvaccinated, may have peaked, although the country still recorded around 1,500 COVID-19 deaths per day over the course of the year. last week, according to CDC data.

Some countries, including Israel and the UK, have already started COVID-19 recall campaigns. The United States authorized additional injections for people with weakened immune systems last month and about 2.3 million people have already received a third injection, according to the CDC. In Japan, COVID-19 booster shots will be provided to medical staff by the end of the year and to the elderly in the new year, vaccine chief Taro Kono said on Tuesday.