(CNN)US health officials are urgently working on a plan to allow second Covid-19 boosters for all adults, a senior White House official confirmed to CNN on Monday. The US Food and Drug Administration is making it a high priority the official said. Second boosters have been authorized for adults 50 and older, as well as some people with weakened immune systems, since late March. But younger adults are eligible for only one booster shot, which was authorized in November. Federal agencies are looking to move quickly on authorizing a second booster for all adults, the source said.
Some experts are concerned that younger adults' immunity may be waning as Covid-19 cases rise with the dominance of the BA.5 Omicron subvariant. Reinfections are more likely with BA.5 than with any previous variants because of immune escape features, Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, said on CNNI Monday.
Turns out when you have a vaccine only approach to a disease, keeping people vaccinated is important! Who could have predicted this?
A fun complication to consider is that there will be a ba.4/ba.5 booster in the fall (which presumably will offer better protection for longer than either of the current boosters currently do) and there will be a minimum interval of some months between the last booster you got and this one.
I think it was initially six months after the second vaccine dose before the first booster and then six before the second booster, then it was shortened to five, and now it's been shortened to two months for the first booster and four months for the second.
So if you set aside the discussion of how much the shortening of these intervals has been motivated by actual science and concern for public health versus the maximizing of profit, you're still left with the dilemna that getting a booster now that does only a little and for only a short time (which is still better than nothing, of course) very well may delay your ability to get a booster in the fall that offers significantly more protection and is actually designed to target recent variants.
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Yeah, I have no faith that health authorities won't fuck up the rollout of the ba.4/5 boosters and deny them to people who get a booster now. I live and work around people who are highly vulnerable to getting seriously ill from covid so I'll take the booster now, and probably lie and get an omicron booster later this fall if I have to.
Yup I'm in a similar situation and I agree that seems to be what makes the most sense