Shana Alesi administers a COVID-19 booster shot to Marine Corps veteran Bill Fatz at Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital in Hines, Illinois, in 2021. A new round of booster shots may become available for some people this spring.
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Shana Alesi administers a COVID-19 booster shot to Marine Corps veteran Bill Fatz at Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital in Hines, Illinois, in 2021. A new round of booster shots may become available for some people this spring.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Katen Moore has already obtained all available COVID-19 vaccines – the two original shots, two boosters with one of the first vaccines and one vaccine with one of the new vaccines updated to target omicron.
Even though she also had COVID once, she desperately wants another booster.
“I just don’t want to get COVID anymore,” says Moore, 63, a nurse practitioner who lives in North Plainfield, NJ “I don’t really know what the long-term risks are. I don’t want the risk of a long COVID. I don’t want the respiratory issues. I don’t want the fatigue. I don’t want those things.
But Moore can’t get another COVID vaccination. The Food and Drug Administration has authorized only one booster dose of new vaccine formulations, the so-called bivalent strokes.
The agency plans a annual COVID reminder campaign starting in the fall – with vaccines that will have been updated to target the variant that is expected to circulate next winter.
But some people who are particularly vulnerable to COVID don’t want to wait.
“You know, in the past we’ve had summer hikes,” Moore said. “Why not take both? »
The FDA is reconsidering the situation and could authorize a second booster with the bivalent vaccines for at least some people, such as those who are at high risk because they have a weakened immune system or are 65 and older, a federal official who does not was not authorized to speak publicly told NPR. A decision could be announced within a few weeks.
This approach is similar to what Britain And Canada have done, and which some vaccine specialists have urged – especially with the ample supply of vaccines available.
“These doses will expire and be thrown away, so it makes sense to have these vaccines in your arms instead of being thrown in the trash,” says Dr. Pierre Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “It makes sense to release this second bivalent spring booster.”
The main concern is that the protection people got from their last vaccine has waned, not only against infection, but also possibly against serious illness. So Hotez says people as young as 50 should be able to get a second bivalent booster if they want one.
“Historically when you look at monovalent vaccines, protection starts to decline after four or five months. We don’t know if that’s the case with the bivalent booster. But you don’t want to find out the hard way,” a- he declared. said.
But other scientists aren’t so sure. They say there’s simply no solid evidence to show that protection against serious illness has waned significantly or that another injection would help as much.
“I don’t have any data to show me that a second bivalent is safe and effective. I have every reason to think it might be. But I don’t really have any data,” says Dr. Gregory Polanddirector of the vaccine research group at the Mayo Clinic.
Additionally, there is a theoretical possibility that this will backfire, as the bivalent boosters target a strain that has already been replaced by a new one called XBB.1.5.
“The problem is that if we keep giving boosters against a virus that’s not circulating when we see the next variant, you may not mount a vigorous immune response to that new viral variant,” Poland says.
Less than 17% of people eligible for the first bivalent vaccine obtained oneand so the demand for another at this time would probably be even lower.
But some people would rush to get one if they could, including Moore and Ellen McDaniel-Weissler, 63, who lives in rural Maryland.
“I deeply believe that the COVID pandemic is not over despite people suffering from COVID fatigue like me,” McDaniel-Webster said. “But people are still dying from COVID every day.”