The U.S. is moving to open up COVID-19 booster shots to all adults, letting them choose another dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
Regulators authorized broader use of the shots Friday, seeking to simplify what has been a confusing list of who's eligible.
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has to agree before tens of millions more Americans qualify.
The agency's scientific advisers voted in support of the move.
The U.S. government is trying to get ahead of rising coronavirus cases that experts fear could snowball into a winter surge with upcoming holiday travel.
The No. 1 priority still is getting more unvaccinated Americans their first doses. That’s because all three COVID-19 vaccines used in the U.S. continue to offer strong protection against severe illness, including hospitalization and death, without a booster. But protection against infection can wane with time.
“Death from COVID-19 is for most people living in the United States vaccine-preventable,” noted CDC adviser Dr. Matthew Daley of Kaiser Permanente Colorado.
More than 195 million Americans are fully vaccinated, defined as having received two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the single-dose J&J. More than 30 million already have received a booster. That includes some people who weren’t eligible; many vaccine sites weren’t checking qualifications.
Some experts worry that all the attention to boosters may harm efforts to reach the 60 million Americans who are eligible for vaccinations but haven’t gotten the shots. There’s also growing concern that rich countries are offering widespread boosters when poor countries haven’t been able to vaccinate more than a small fraction of their populations.
“In terms of the No. 1 priority for reducing transmission in this country and throughout the world, this remains getting people their first vaccine series,” said Dr. David Dowdy of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
(Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.)
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