Friday’s authorization by federal officials to expand COVID-19 booster shot eligibility to all adults was met with overwhelming support from public health experts. But some were puzzled as to why the Food and Drug Administration didn’t take this step sooner.
in spite of a Plan In order to make the booster available to nearly all Americans by the end of September by the Biden administration, the FDA authorized a third shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for certain populations, such as those 65 years of age and older and those with underlying medical conditions. Folks, up to the point.
With enough solid evidence to demonstrate safety in those groups, experts said they were disappointed that Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna Booster had to be authorized for all so far.
“It’s too late,” said Dr. Robert Murphy, executive director of the Institute for Global Health and professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “What’s the problem with getting the best treatment out there quickly?”
FDA signoff, followed by a Approval The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formalize what has emerged in a patchwork of states in recent days. governor from Massachusetts To california People 18 years of age and above are allowed to have a booster. Their decisions come before the holidays, when indoor gatherings are expected to be one. Nail In covid cases including breakthrough infection.
Professor of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Dr. “We’ve had evidence for a need for boosters for several months,” Dori Segev said.
He said he had heard of fibbing before people had taken boosters. officially qualified.
“When you have people exaggerate their work status or their medical risk status or feel like they have to lie flat-out for their own safety, that’s a failure on the part of the FDA and CDC. is,” he said.
But others weren’t as quick to make a decision, arguing that the FDA needs time to review safety data, which includes rare risks. myocarditis Associated with the covid shot and its third dose.
Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s vaccine research group, said the FDA was “working at a record speed”, if anything, noting that Moderna only submitted its application for a booster expansion earlier this week. and Pfizer did so earlier this month.
“I think it would be a public relations disaster to say ‘we’re not going to review the data, we’re going to approve it,'” he said.
Tenor Goodwin Venema, a professor and visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, agreed.
“I don’t think there is going to be anything to be gained by looking back and criticizing what happened. We are still in the middle of a pandemic. We are looking at the possibility of another surge,” she said. “We just need more and more Americans need to have a laser-focus on getting vaccinated, including children who are now eligible.”
The FDA did not respond to NBC News about its booster shot timeline. in one Friday interview with The Associated Press“We move as fast as we can,” said the agency’s vaccine chief, Dr. Peter Marks.
“We have to do the right analysis to make sure that when we do take an action, we can stand behind it,” he said. “Our goal is to make sure that the person who is on the fence, or perhaps in doubt about whether to get the vaccine, feels confident enough in our decisions that they are willing to come along and get the vaccine or get a booster.”
Will people really get a third dose?
Whether people will choose to take the third dose remains to be seen. All experts agreed that initially allowing only a portion of the population to receive boosters could lead to confusion.
“It’s fueling the anti-vaccine crowd,” Murphy said. “You don’t know whether you have to get the vaccine, whether it works or not. This kind of messaging isn’t going to help.”
While the FDA could have used more subtle language — such as more forcefully indicating that their initial decision was based on the best available data at the time — the messaging problem was inevitable, Poland believes.
“We were doing it in real time,” he said. “If we were to study these vaccines and use them for low-grade outbreaks over five or 10 years, like most other vaccines, we would have come out with a different set of recommendations. , but the pandemic did not allow for that luxury.”
“If we were to study these vaccines and use them for low-grade outbreaks over five or 10 years, like most other vaccines, we would have come out with a different set of recommendations. , but the pandemic did not allow for that luxury.”
Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group
And it’s not clear whether the general public will understand the evolving nature of the recommendations and the science behind them, Segev said. He worried that many people “will start seeing the message as, ‘Tomorrow they’re going to tell me something different, so why should I listen to them now?
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease physician, hopes adults will listen.
pointing to studies Israel, where many people have received a third dose of the Pfizer shot, Fauci has said repeatedly in recent months that the booster has been shown to be safe and effective.
He argued this week that even though vaccines still provide protection against serious illness and hospitalization, a third shot would provide benefits beyond that.
“I don’t know of any other vaccines that we only worry about keeping people out of hospitals,” Fauci said at the White House briefing on Wednesday. “I think an important thing is to prevent people from getting symptomatic diseases.”