Biden admin. crafts COVID-19 booster plan; WHO says poor nations need initial shots

The Biden administration this week is coalescing around a plan to administer booster shots to people who completed their COVID-19 vaccinations eight months ago.

The U.S. would start rolling out third shots of vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna in September as it tries to fend off the fast-moving delta variant of the coronavirus, according to the plan first reported by The New York Times.

The Food and Drug Administration would need to approve the third shot before the rollout. Recipients of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine will likely need boosters, but the decision will depend on the results of a two-dose trial.

The booster rollout is expected to mirror the original deployment of the vaccines. For instance, health workers and then older populations would receive the first wave of third doses because they are furthest from their initial course, with some of them receiving their first shot in December.

Scientists say the vaccines are effective against the coronavirus, but antibody levels will wane after a while, requiring a booster in the face of the aggressive delta variant.

The federal government last week recommended a booster shot for a narrow part of the population that is immunocompromised.

The World Health Organization has criticized wealthier nations for pushing booster plans before the rest of the globe gets its first crack at vaccination.

“Our recommendation remains to make sure that those who are most are risk — older populations, those with underlying conditions and, critically, our health workers — in all countries around the world receive that first, second dose before we do the boosters for those who don’t necessarily need them,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 technical lead for the WHO, told CNN.