COVID-19 Booster Doses May Soon Be Recommended

Booster doses for the COVID-19 vaccine may soon be recommended for all individuals 8 months after their second dose of the vaccine, according to The Associated Press.

An official announcement is predicted to be released as early as this week, following the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) latest recommendation of an additional dose for certain immunocompromised populations.

Recommendations on booster doses come as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to spike, in large part due to the highly transmissible Delta variant.

COVID-19 booster doses would follow similar vaccination priority as prior COVID-19 vaccination, with health care workers, long-term care residents, and older adults among the first to be offered booster shots. Third doses are said to only be offered following the formal approval of the vaccines by the FDA.

However, the World Health Organization is calling for a delay in offering booster doses, to make sure there is enough supply of the vaccines to offer first doses to those in developing countries.

“There is concern that the vaccine may start to wane in its effectiveness,” said Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, who is the director of the National Institutes of Health. “And Delta is a nasty one for use to try to deal with. The combination of those two means we may need boosters, maybe beginning first with health care providers, as well as people in nursing homes, and then gradually moving forward.”

—Leigh Precopio

Reference:

Miller Z. Sources: US to recommend COVID vaccine boosters at 8 months. News release. The Associated Press; August 17, 2021. Accessed August 18, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-36d971bacb42017502f7cc4c2c02ec1c