On Nov. 19, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), supported an advisory committee’s advice and expanded the group of people who can now get COVID-19 booster doses to include all adults over age 18.
But just because you’re now eligible for a booster shot, do you need to run out and get one? Does the booster recommendation mean your original vaccination is no longer protecting you? How urgent is the need to get that booster dose?
The CDC now says that all adults who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine are eligible to get booster at least six months after their second dose. (The agency had already recommended boosters for all adults initially vaccinated with the Johnson&Johnson-Janssen shot.) Previously, the CDC made a distinction between those over age 65 and with underlying health conditions—who the agency said “should” get a booster shot—and those living or working in high risk settings, who “may” get a booster.
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According to a spokesperson for the CDC, the latest expansion for all adults falls into the latter category, so it makes it possible for any adult to get boosted, and leaves the choice up to the individual.
Many people are interpreting that to mean that the urgency to get a booster isn’t as great as the urgency behind the CDC’s original message to get vaccinated, and some people aren’t quite clear about how necessary the booster is. Studies show that the original doses of all three vaccines currently approved or authorized—two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots, or one dose of the J&J-Janssen shot—continue to protect people from getting severe disease and needing to be hospitalized. But the agency decided to recommend boosters because there is also growing evidence from countries like Israel, where more of the population has been vaccinated for a longer period of time than in the U.S., that infections among vaccinated people are possible, and…
Source : time
