The United States wants an anti-Covid vaccine booster campaign from mid-September (media) – archyde

The US government will announce its intention to launch an anti-Covid vaccine booster campaign for Americans who received their first two doses eight months previously, which could begin as early as mid-September, according to US media.

The decision could be announced as early as this week, according to the New York Times, which cited unnamed sources in Joe Biden’s administration Monday evening.

The campaign will probably initially concern residents of nursing homes and health workers, then the elderly, who are the first to have received the vaccine in the United States. They will be followed by the rest of the population, according to the daily.

US officials are considering the third dose to be the same vaccine as the first two, Moderna or Pfizer. People who have received a single injection of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, a minority in the United States, will also be affected by an additional dose, but additional data are awaited concerning them, specifies the New York Times.

This measure, however, depends on the authorization of a booster dose by the United States Medicines Agency (FDA), adds the Washington Post.

The Pfizer / BioNTech alliance announced Monday that it had submitted first batches of data to the FDA showing the benefits of a third dose for immune protection. And more complete results will be submitted “quickly”, the companies said.

Covid-19: the incidence in the United States (AFP /)

As the United States faces a surge in the Delta variant epidemic, experts fear that the effectiveness of vaccines may decline over time.

An advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the main US federal public health agency, is due to meet next week to discuss the issue, and thus pave the way for FDA clearance.

The discourse held by health officials on this subject has changed considerably since the beginning of July. The FDA and the CDC then issued a joint statement assuring that vaccinated Americans “did not need a booster at this time.”

The United States already authorized last week an additional dose of messenger RNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) for certain immunocompromised people.

And the White House adviser on the pandemic Anthony Fauci then estimated that a booster dose would also be necessary “at one time or another” for healthy people, in order to ensure “the durability of the protection” .

la / vgr