FDA expected to authorize COVID booster shots for those with weakened immune systems

• The Food and Drug Administration is expected to greenlight booster COVID-19 vaccine doses for people with compromised immune systems.
• The third shots, from Pfizer and Moderna shots, will not be made available to people who don’t have compromised immune systems.
• But booster shots for everyone could be coming soon.

Booster shots for COVID-19 are on the way.

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to authorize a booster shot for the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines to people with compromised immune systems as soon as Thursday, according to reports.

The decision whether a third shot was needed has been a subject of debate over the past several months, but NBC News reported that the FDA will amend emergency-use authorizations for extra doses for the immunocompromised on the recommendation of a panel of advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 3% of Americans have weakened immune systems, according to The New York Times. That includes people who’ve had organ transplants, people undergoing chemotherapy, and those with HIV, among others. 

Several countries have already been offering third doses to certain people. Since April, France began giving people with poor immune responses their booster shot. Germany and Hungary soon followed with the same practice.

Fauci: It’s ‘likely’ everyone will need a booster shot

The third dose hasn’t been recommended by the CDC for healthy people, but it seems like that could change in the coming months.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CBS This Morning on Thursday that everybody will someday “likely” need a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot because the initial shots seem to fade in effectiveness over time.

“We’re already starting to see an indication of some diminution,” Fauci said.

By early September, the FDA is expected to have a strategy for follow-up shots just as the school year begins again, but it seems it will be a wait-and-see approach as to who receives the third jab.

The Biden administration has been pushing to get a booster sooner for people 65 or older and people who received shots in December or January.

Familiar side effects of booster shots

In early reports, booster shots show similar side effects to that of the second dose. A preliminary study in Israel using the Pfizer-BioNTech booster shot found that 31% of people reported some side effect, the most common being soreness in the area where they were jabbed.

Booster shots have been called for by both Moderna and Pfizer. Moderna said it expects people who received its two-dose vaccine to need a third shot in the fall, since antibody levels showed a decline after at least six months. Pfizer said its third dose increased antibody levels as much as tenfold in comparison to after the second dose.

However, a recent study from the Mayo Clinic found that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine may not be as good at preventing infection from the Delta variant as Moderna’s vaccine. Based on vaccine data between January and July, Pfizer’s effectiveness seemed to drop to 42% in July, which is when the Delta variant became the most dominant strain of COVID-19 in the US.