Who all need to take Covid19 booster shots?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head has made it more apparent who should (or shouldn’t) consider a second Covid-19 booster vaccine, saying recent infections could act as a “natural boost” to immunity.
CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky told NBC News that people who received two doses of the mRNA vaccine and a booster would not need a second booster if they had recently been infected with the omicron variant of the coronavirus. “If you’ve had omicron disease in the past two or three months, that boosts your immune system,” Walensky said, adding that these people can wait for another two to four months for a second booster.
In the first national interview with the CDC director since federal regulators first offered adults 50 and older a second booster dose of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine last week, Walensky said the director of the first national interview with the CDC there are no known security issues. Who is eligible to be vaccinated. A second booster vaccine is now available, although they may need another shot this fall. The Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines offered excellent protection against severe disease, but it became increasingly clear that they lost their effectiveness against infection after a few months. The second booster decision was specifically for people 65 or 50 and older with chronic medical conditions who received their first booster dose at least four months earlier. The CDC also said that all adults who have received two doses of the J&J vaccine should also receive the mRNA booster. “We’re starting to see a lot of people getting a third hit four, five, six months later, and we know you’re probably out of protection,” Varensky said.
“But we also know that for people who have experienced deterioration, those most susceptible to serious illness are our older adults and people with comorbidities.” However, some vaccine experts doubted whether healthy adults aged 50 and over needed the fourth dose. Some are wondering if they should get hit four now, as the nationwide cases seem to be below the lower threshold, or wait until the fall in case a new, more dangerous option takes over, at which point they may need extra protection. . . For them, Valensky said it was “a personal judgment.”
“I know many, many healthy people aged 50-55 who will do this,” he said. He said that getting the fourth dose now won’t stop a person from getting a possible fifth hit in the fall, adding that there are no known side effects from getting more boosters. “If you are inclined to go ahead and get a vaccine, there are very few downsides to this right now, especially for those at high risk of serious illness,” he said.
“If you can try it now, it could mean you still need another hit this fall.” The FDA advisory committee will meet on Wednesday to discuss the future of Covid-19 boosters. Wilensky, 52, said he planned to get a second Covid shot “in about a week”.
All current cases of Covid in the country are micro micron, with the most contagious BA.2 subvariant currently accounting for 72.2% of cases. In the Northeast, BA.2 is even higher at 84%.
The growing prevalence of the subvariant calls for the urgency of boosters, Walensky said. “We haven’t seen BA.2 cause increased disease severity, but we have seen that it is slightly more contagious.”
Despite all the attention on the fourth dose, millions of eligible Americans have not bothered to take the third. According to the CDC, those eligible for a first recall have remained at about 47%.