If getting 2 dose of COVID-19 vaccine wasn’t enough, Biden Administration is all set to give booster shots to eligible Americans.
The laid out plan comes with the following eligibility criteria:
- An individual who has taken mRNA-based vaccines – Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna.
- There is a gap of 8 months between the second dose of vaccine & the booster shot.
If you follow both the criteria, you’re eligible to receive a booster shot starting from Sept. 20.
The eight month gap means by the scheduled timeline, Nursing Home Residents, Healthcare Workers, & older adults will be first-in-line to receive the booster shots.
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Key Takeaways From White House Briefing
In the White House briefing, the Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy laid out some important information on COVID-19 vaccine booster shots. Here are some key takeaways from the briefing:
- If you’ve received two doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, you’re still protected from the worst COVID-19 outcomes & can avoid further hospitalization & death.
- Months after getting fully vaccinated, an immunocompromised individual can start to develop COVID-19 symptoms especially because of the rise in Delta Variant cases. The high-risk individuals are those who have recently received a transplant or been diagnosed with cancer.
- This Wednesday CDC also published three studies that clearly recommends the need of booster shots for mRNA based vaccines in the coming months. However, either of the 3 studies doesn’t recommend booster shots for every American.
- In the past few months, the defensive wall provided by COVID-19 vaccines has weakened considerably.
- At the moment, it’s not clear if the decline in protection against CORONAVIRUS is the result of reduced immunity in the high-risk individuals. Or it’s because of considerable drop in COVID-19 precautions such as wearing masks.
- Before the sudden increase in the delta variant cases, CDC analyzed effectiveness of vaccines among the residents of over 4K nursing homes. Now that the daily cases are soaring past 100K, CDC is analyzing close to 15K nursing homes. Even though, the study didn’t evaluated the protection against severe illness, the effectiveness of vaccine has reduced effectively from 75% to 53%.
Recommended read: How a Common Drug Can Decrease COVID-19 Infection By Up To 70%.
So, these are some of the key takeaways from the White House briefing on the booster shots starting from Sept. 20.
Before, you begin receiving booster shots, the FDA must give its not start giving booster shots to eligible Americans.
Not just FDA, an advisory committee of the CDC must review every available evidence at hand and make recommendations according to it.
That’s all for now.
What do you think of this outlined plan by Biden Administration?
Once you’re eligible to receive booster shot, will you get it or resist getting vaccinated like anti-vaxxers.