‘Delta a nasty one’: US to recommend Covid-19 vaccine boosters
- US facing renewed wave of infections fuelled by Delta variant
- Booster shot programme could start as early as September
Federal health officials have been actively looking at whether extra shots for the vaccinated would be needed as early as this fall, reviewing case numbers in the US as well as the situation in other countries such as Israel, where preliminary studies suggest the vaccine’s protection against serious illness dropped among those vaccinated in January.
An announcement on the US booster recommendation was expected as soon as this week, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Doses would only begin to be administered widely once the Food and Drug Administration formally approves the vaccines. That action was expected for the Pfizer shot in the coming weeks.
Last week, US health officials recommended boosters for some with weakened immune systems, citing their higher risk of catching the virus and evidence that the vaccines’ effectiveness waned over time.
The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr Francis Collins, said on Sunday the US could decide in the next couple weeks whether to offer coronavirus booster shots to Americans this fall.
Among the first to receive them could be health care workers, nursing home residents and other older Americans, who were among the first Americans to be vaccinated.
Israel has been offering a coronavirus booster to people over 60 who were already vaccinated more than five months ago.
For months, officials had said data still indicated that people remain highly protected from Covid-19, including the Delta variant, after receiving the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna regimen or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. But US health officials made clear on Sunday they were preparing for the possibility that the time for boosters may come sooner than later.
“There is a concern that the vaccine may start to wane in its effectiveness,” Collins said. “And Delta is a nasty one for us 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” with others, such as older Americans who were among the first to get vaccinations after they became available late last year.
He said because the Delta variant only started hitting the US hard in July, the “next couple of weeks” of case data will help the US make a decision.
The spike in cases has fuelled a relatively small uptick in vaccinations, with an average of about 770,000 daily shots, up from an average of about 500,000 last month.
The White House has said that even though the US has begun sharing more than 110 million vaccine doses with the world, the nation has enough domestic supply to deliver boosters to Americans should they be recommended by health officials.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
