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People line up at the mass vaccination site at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco which opened today for healthcare workers and people over the age of 65 on February 5, 2021 in San Francisco, California. California.
Amy Osborne | AFP | Getty Images
The San Francisco Department of Public Health and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital said on Tuesday they were allowing patients who received the single-dose Covid-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson to receive a second injection produced by Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna.
J&J recipients can make special requests for an “extra dose” of an mRNA vaccine, city health officials said in a statement to CNBC, declining to call second injections “boosters.” . J & J’s vaccine requires only one dose and recipients are considered fully immunized two weeks after receiving the vaccine.
In a call with reporters later Tuesday, San Francisco health officials said they were allowing patients to receive additional injections due to the high number of requests they were receiving from residents. They maintained that J & J’s vaccine is very effective against the virus and its variants.
“We have received requests based on patients speaking to their doctors and that is why we are authorizing the accommodations,” said Naveena Bobba, assistant director of health in the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Health officials said they are not recommending booster shots at this time, following guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This decision does not represent a change in policy for the SFDPH,” the public health department said in a statement. “We continue to align with the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and do not recommend a booster injection at this time. We will continue to review all new data and adjust our guidelines as necessary. “
The CDC does not currently recommend that Americans mix Covid injections under most circumstances, and federal health officials say vaccine booster doses are not needed at this time.
The announcement from San Francisco health officials comes as some Americans say they are finding ways to get extra doses of Covid vaccines – some even going so far as to receive the extra injections from different companies – due to concerns about the highly contagious delta variant.
Georgetown University virologist Dr Angela Rasmussen told CNBC last month that she received a booster of the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech in late June, two months after receiving the single dose of J&J. She was concerned about her level of protection against delta after studies suggested that a single dose of a Covid vaccine was not adequate.
Since Rasmussen received his booster, a new study has suggested that the J&J vaccine is much less effective against the delta and lambda variants than against the original virus. Researchers who led the study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, now say they are hopeful that J&J recipients will eventually receive a booster of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
Granted, the new research contradicts a study by the company, which found the vaccine to be effective against delta, especially serious illness and hospitalization, even eight months after inoculation. It is likely to reignite the debate over the mixing and pairing of clichés in the United States as the highly contagious delta variant continues to spread across the United States.
J&J did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the San Francisco Department of Public Health announcement.
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