The question of whether a COVID-19 booster shot will be helpful and safe may receive an answer Friday. That is when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s top vaccine advisers will meet to review updated evidence for recommending COVID-19 vaccine booster doses.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an independent group of medical and public health experts, will consider the clinical impact of providing additional shots to fully vaccinated people with weakened immune systems.
ACIP hinted at early support for COVID-19 boosters in July, but the CDC is not required to follow its recommendations. If an extra dose is authorized for this vulnerable group, however, the elderly and long-term care facility residents would likely be next in line, industry experts have told McKnight’s Clinical Daily.
The ACIP meeting comes after a top federal health official said booster shot authorization could happen within days or weeks. There is precedence for using boosters in the immunosuppressed and elderly — with flu shots for example. But federal regulators have had to contend with a lack of data for the relatively new COVID-19 vaccines.
Third Pfizer dose elicits familiar symptoms
One source of evidence could come from Israel. The country began offering adults aged 60 and older a third shot of its standard Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in late July in a bid to slow the spread of infection due to the highly transmissible delta variant. Thousands took up the offer, with the country’s largest healthcare system saying it had administered shots to more than 240,000 people as of Sunday, Reuters reported.
There have been no new or unusual safety concerns so far, according to initial results from a survey of about 4,500 recipients. These seniors received a third dose between July 30 and Aug 1, and 88% reported that side effects — if any —were either reduced or similar to those they experienced after receiving their second dose. Pain at the injection site was the most common complaint, the news outlet reported.
