Influential government advisers are beginning to debate just which Americans should get an extra dose of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine — even though regulators haven't yet cleared the extra shots.
The meeting came days after a different advisory group — this one serving the Food and Drug Administration — overwhelmingly rejected a sweeping White House plan to dispense third shots to nearly everyone. Instead, that panel endorsed booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine only for senior citizens and those at high risk from the virus.
Last week’s FDA advisory panel decision was only the first hurdle as the government sets its booster policy. The FDA itself still has to decide whether it agrees with its advisers’ recommendation and will authorize Pfizer boosters.If it does, the CDC then must recommend who should get the extra shots after hearing from its own Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, whose meeting was scheduled to extend into Thursday.
“I want to highlight that in September of 2021 in the United States, deaths from COVID-19 are largely vaccine-preventable with the primary series of any of the three vaccines available,” said Dr. Matthew Daley, a researcher at Kaiser Permanente Colorado and CDC adviser who opened Wednesday’s meeting.
Another question was how many months after the second shot the booster should be given. Scientists have talked about six months or eight months.
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