“CDC contacted tens of thousands of nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other high-risk settings to ensure that they are ready,” he said.
“Colorado has nine mobile vaccination clinics ready to go to get boosters to where people are. And we’ll double that number to 18 over the coming weeks.”
He said Colorado, New York, Ohio and other states were readying large vaccination centers if there is demand.
What about everyone else—including people who got Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines?
The FDA and CDC will continue to consider widening the recommendations for who should and could get booster shots. Moderna has asked the FDA to consider booster doses for people who got its vaccine. Johnson & Johnson has yet to apply.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said her agency acted quickly on FDA recommendations for Pfizer vaccine recipients.
“We will, with similar urgency, evaluate the available data in the coming weeks to swiftly make additional recommendations for other populations at risk, and people who received the Moderna and J&J vaccines,” she told Friday’s briefing.
Murthy made a similar promise.
“I want to speak directly to those who received Moderna and J&J,” Murthy told the briefing.
“Your health matters just as much as other vaccine recipients, and we want to make sure that your protection against Covid is strong and reliable as well. That’s why the FDA is working with Moderna and J&J to get and process their data as quickly as possible with the goal of making booster recommendations for Moderna and J&J recipients in the coming weeks. This is a high, high priority.”
Why do people need them?
The protection provided by Covid-19 vaccines appears to wane over time, especially for people 65 and older, the CDC’s Ruth Link-Gelles, who helps lead the CDC’s Vaccine Effectiveness Team, said Friday.
She reviewed a series of studies looking at the overall effectiveness of vaccines in various groups between February and August and found similar patterns for Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines, both made using mRNA. Effectiveness started to wane a few months after people were fully vaccinated — defined as two weeks after their second dose of either vaccine.
“For individuals 65 plus, we saw significant declines in VE (vaccine effectiveness) against infection during Delta for the mRNA products,” Link-Gelles told CDC vaccine advisers this past week.
“We also saw declines, particularly for Pfizer, for 65 up, that we’re not seeing in younger populations. Finally there’s evidence of waning VE against hospitalization in the Delta period,” she said.
In a study of 4,000 healthcare personnel, first responders, and other frontline workers in eight places who were tested every week regardless of symptoms, vaccine protection against any infection declined from 91% pre-Delta to 66% during Delta.
A study called IVY looked at hospitalized adults in 18 states between March and August. Efficacy of Pfizer’s vaccine waned from 91%, 14 to 120 days after full vaccination, to 77% three months or more after full vaccination. Moderna’s vaccine effectiveness did not really wane, staying at 92% or 93% in that study.
Pfizer says its studies show booster doses bring people’s immunity back up to what it was right after they got their second shots, or to even higher levels.
Do I need a doctor’s note?
No. People are being asked to “self-attest” as to their eligibility for a booster vaccine.
But people should not cheat– especially when it comes to waiting six months or so before getting a booster, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
That’s because a longer time period between prime — the first doses of vaccine — and boost helps the immune system mature. The longer one waits, the better the immune response.
“If you allow the immune response to mature over a period of a few months, you get much more of a bang out of the shot, as it were — an enhancement of your antibodies,” he said.
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