US Considering COVID-19 Vaccine Recalls For Seniors As Soon As Fall

WASHINGTON – Warning of difficult days ahead with an increase in COVID-19 infections, the director of the National Institutes of Health said on Sunday that the United States may decide within the next two weeks whether or not to offer booster injections of coronavirus to Americans this fall.

Health care workers, nursing home residents and other older Americans could be among the first to receive them.

Dr Francis Collins has also again pleaded for unvaccinated people to get vaccinated, calling them “sitting ducks” for a delta variant that is ravaging the country and showing little sign of slackening off.

“It is going very sharply upwards with no sign of having peaked,” he said.

Federal health officials have been actively pursuing whether additional injections for those vaccinated may be needed as early as this fall, examining the number of cases in the United States “almost daily,” as well as the situation in other countries like Israel. , where preliminary studies suggest vaccine protection against serious illness has declined among those vaccinated in January.

Israel has offered a coronavirus booster to people over 60 who were vaccinated more than five months ago.

No US decision has been made because cases here, so far, still indicate that people remain highly protected against COVID-19, including the delta variant, after receiving the Pfizer or Moderna two-dose regimen or the Johnson & Johnson single dose vaccine.

But U.S. health officials made it clear on Sunday that they were bracing for the possibility that the time for recalls would come sooner rather than later.

“There are concerns that the vaccine is starting to lose its effectiveness,” Collins said. “And delta is a problem that we have to try to cope with. The combination of these two means that we may need reminders, perhaps starting with health care providers first, as well as by people in nursing homes and then gradually moving forward “with others, like older Americans who were among the first to get vaccinated after they became available late last year .

He said that because the delta variant didn’t start hitting the United States hard until July, the “next two weeks” of case data will help the United States make a decision.

Moderna chairman Stephen Hoge said seeing “breakthrough” infections emerge among those vaccinated within six months was surprising, although most of the symptoms so far have not been life threatening. “I think this suggests that we will need booster shots to get through the winter,” he said.

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration said people with weakened immune systems may be given an extra dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines to better protect them as the delta variant continues to rise.

“If it turns out that as the data comes in we see that we need to give an extra dose to people in nursing homes, in fact, or to the elderly, we will be absolutely ready to do it very quickly, ”said Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.

While the United States currently registers an average of about 129,000 new infections per day – a 700% increase since early July – that number could rise over the next two weeks to 200,000, a level not seen since among the United States. worst days of the pandemic in January and February, Collins said.

He and Fauci stressed that the best way to contain the virus is for the unvaccinated to get vaccinated.

Currently, about 60% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose and nearly 51% are fully immunized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Areas with low vaccination rates have been particularly affected by infections, such as Louisiana, Texas, Florida and Mississippi.

The rapid rise in infections in the United States has caused a shortage of beds in intensive care units, nurses and other frontline staff in virus hot spots who can no longer cope with the flood. of unvaccinated patients. Health officials are also warning that more children who are not yet eligible for vaccines could be infected, although it is not clear whether the delta variant causes more serious illness among them.

“It’s heartbreaking considering we never thought we would be back in this space,” Collins said of the overall rise in infections in the United States. “But here we are with the delta variant, which is so contagious, and this heartbreaking situation where 90 million people still go unvaccinated that are ducks sitting for this virus, and that’s the mess we are in. in a world of hurt. “

Fauci said that as more people get vaccinated, in many places everyone – both vaccinated and unvaccinated – will have to do their part with “mitigations,” such as wearing of masks in schools and other public spaces.

“We just have to realize that we are dealing with a public health crisis,” he said. “The more infections you get, the more you spread, the more likely the virus is to continue to evolve and mutate.”

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