capture the population that might most benefit from this fourth booster dose.”
The CDC’s support signals that second booster shots should now become available to recommended recipients.
Tuesday’s move by the CDC and FDA has not come without debate, however.
Some federal health officials strongly support second boosters, while others are skeptical, but they came to the decision to offer the shots in case infections surge again before the fall, The New York Times reported.
Vaccines to target newer variants?
Marks said the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee will meet next week to discuss whether another booster will be recommended in the fall — possibly involving a new vaccine targeting one of the newer COVID variants.
“It would not be surprising if there’s a potential need. I don’t want to shock anyone, but there may be a need for people to get an additional booster in the fall along with a more general booster campaign,” Marks said. “We may need to shift over to another variant coverage. It may be a decision is made that rather than the vaccines we currently have, which are called vaccines against the prototype virus, that we will move to a vaccine that is either against one of the variants, whether it’s Omicron, Beta, Delta, or something else.”
“We know already that it is reasonable from this past year to give the influenza vaccine and COVID 19 vaccine at the same time,” Marks noted. “It may turn out that if we decide that boosters are necessary, that our annual flu vaccine campaign — in which usually on an average year in the United States, we give somewhere between 150 and 170 million doses of influenza vaccine — could be paired with a COVID 19 vaccine campaign. That will be something for discussion as a possibility because of the operational efficiency that could bring and the protection that it might help bring.”
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Should you get a second booster?
In the meantime, if a major wave of COVID-19 surfaces in the next few months, a second booster dose for older Americans could save thousands of lives and prevent tens of thousands of hospitalizations. But if there is no significant surge until the fall, second boosters could waste vaccine doses, increase vaccine fatigue and raise questions about the federal government’s strategy, according to the Times.
Public health experts said they are finding it harder and harder to advise their patients on whether they should get yet another shot.
“I’ve been getting multiple inquiries from lay friends over the past few days: ‘What does this mean, and what should I do?'” John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, told the Post. “I find it increasingly difficult to tell friends what they should do. It’s becoming really problematic.”
The primary benefit of a fourth shot is thought to be protection against severe illness, and that risk can vary dramatically among people 50 and older. A plethora of factors — underlying health conditions, age and time since last booster dose or infection — all play a role in