MORE BOOSTERS DEBATED
Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 boosters are currently being debated by a separate body of experts convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which may recommend further specifics about recipients.
For example, if obesity is considered as putting a person “at high risk of severe COVID”, that definition would cover more than 42 per cent of the US population aged over 20.
The CDC may also have to define which workplaces and other settings might lead to “frequent institutional or occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2”.
For its part, the FDA indicated this would cover “health care workers, teachers and day care staff, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons, among others”.
The FDA’s emergency use authorisation applies to those aged 18 and up for the high risk of severe disease and high-exposure categories. It also only applies to Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine.
Recipients of Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, the other US-authorised vaccines, will now await news for when they, too, might become eligible for another shot.
A number of studies have shown two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, or a single shot of Johnson & Johnson, continue to confer high protection against severe outcomes – but this is slightly reduced for the elderly.
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