The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have unanimously approved Moderna booster shots. The committee, which advises the FDA, endorsed the use of half a dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in people 65 and over for all adults with medical conditions that put them at a higher risk and people whose jobs give them a higher chance of getting infected.
The new booster dose would be administered at least six months after the second dose.
It's expected the FDA will model Moderna’s authorization on the Pfizer one it approved a few weeks ago. It will now take into account the committee recommendation and make a decision soon.
"We do need to account for the fact that mild to moderate COVID-19 can be associated with adverse outcomes such as blood clots and long COVID-19, even in those who have breakthrough infections," the FDA's top vaccine official, Dr Peter Marks, told the committee.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 188.3 million people in the US are now fully vaccinated. Of them, over 9.3 million have received a booster dose, most of them over 65. That’s 13 percent of the fully vaccinated population. Most of those extra doses were the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine but about 1.5 million doses were Moderna, which only immunocompromised individuals were eligible for.
The committee is meeting again today to discuss another booster, this time for the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Johnson & Johnson has requested authorization to give a second dose to some "high risk" Americans. This would be as early as two months after they were first vaccinated with the single-shot vaccine, much sooner compared to the mRNA vaccines approved in the US.
You can follow the ongoing discussion below:
