coronavirus pandemic
Dutch, Australians find omicron variant: others halt flights
The Netherlands confirmed 13 cases of the new omicron variant of the coronavirus on Sunday and Australia found two as the countries half a world apart became the latest to detect it in travelers arriving from southern Africa.
Israel decided to bar entry to foreigners and Morocco said it would suspend all incoming air travel from around the world for two weeks starting Monday — the most drastic of a growing raft of travel curbs being imposed by nations around the world as they scramble to slow the variant's spread.
Confirmed or suspected cases of the new variant have already emerged in several European countries, in Israel and in Hong Kong, just days after it was identified by researchers in South Africa. The "act first, ask questions later" approach reflected growing alarm about the emergence of a potentially more contagious variant nearly two years into a pandemic that has killed more than 5 million people, upended lives and disrupted economies across the globe.
While much remains to be learned about the new variant, researchers are concerned that it may be more resistant to the protection provided by vaccines and could mean that the pandemic lasts for longer than anticipated.
The Dutch public health authority confirmed that 13 people who arrived from South Africa on Friday have so far tested positive for omicron. They were among 61 people who tested positive for the virus after arriving on the last two flights to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport before a flight ban was implemented. They were immediately put into isolation, most at a nearby hotel, while sequencing was carried out.
Authorities in Australia said two overseas travelers who arrived in Sydney from Africa became the first in the country to test positive for the omicron variant. Arrivals from nine African countries are now required to quarantine in a hotel upon arrival. Two German states reported a total of three cases in returning travelers over the weekend.
Read: South African scientists brace for wave propelled by omicron
Israel moved to ban entry by foreigners and mandate quarantine for all Israelis arriving from abroad.
"Restrictions on the country's borders is not an easy step, but it's a temporary and necessary step," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.
Dr. Ran Balicer, head of the government's advisory panel on COVID-19, told Israel's Kan public radio that the new measures were necessary for the "fog of war" surrounding the new variant, saying it was "better to act early and strictly" to prevent its spread.
Morocco's Foreign Ministry tweeted Sunday that all incoming air travel to the North African country would be suspended to "preserve the achievements realized by Morocco in the fight against the pandemic, and to protect the health of citizens." Morocco has been at the forefront of vaccinations in Africa, and kept its borders closed for months in 2020 because of the pandemic.
Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said he asked his country's public health institute for advice on whether additional travel restrictions are needed, but he wants to coordinate with his European Union counterparts because "I think those are really steps that we will have to take together."
Many countries have restricted or banned travel from various southern African countries — among the latest New Zealand, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Places that already had imposed restrictions include Brazil, Canada, the EU, Iran, and the U.S. This goes against the advice of the World Health Organization, which has warned against any overreaction before the variant is thoroughly studied.
South Africa's government responded angrily to the travel bans, which it said are "akin to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and the ability to detect new variants quicker." It said it will try to persuade countries that imposed them to reconsider.
"Whilst we respect the right of all countries to take the necessary precautionary measures to protect their citizens, we need to remember that this pandemic requires collaboration and sharing of expertise," the minister for international relations and cooperation, Naledi Pandor, said in a statement.
Read: Britain tightens COVID rules as world on alert over omicron
The United States' top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said he wouldn't be surprised if the omicron variant was already in the U.S., though it hasn't yet been detected there.
In Europe, much of which already has been struggling with a sharp increase in cases over recent weeks, officials also were on guard.
The U.K. on Saturday tightened rules on mask-wearing and on testing of international arrivals after finding two omicron cases. Spain announced it won't admit unvaccinated British visitors starting Dec. 1.
Italy was going through lists of airline passengers who arrived in the past two weeks after a business traveler who returned from Mozambique and landed in Rome on Nov. 11 tested positive for omicron. The Lazio region's top health official, Alessio D'Amato, said that "controls at airports, ports and train stations have been reinforced."
French Health Minister Olivier Veran said that, while his country had no confirmed cases yet, "it is probable that there currently are cases in circulation."
While it is not clear yet how existing vaccines work against the omicron variant, Veran said France isn't changing its strategy to fight the latest surge of infections driven by the delta variant, which centers on increasing vaccinations and boosters.
David Hui, a respiratory medicine expert and government adviser on the pandemic in Hong Kong, said that even though it is not clear if current coronavirus vaccines are effective against the new variant, the city's vaccination rate should be increased and booster doses should be implemented as soon as possible.
He said the two people who tested positive for the omicron variant had received the Pfizer shot and exhibited very mild symptoms, such as a sore throat.
"Vaccines should work but there would be some reduction in effectiveness," he said.
Global Covid cases top 244 million
The overall number of global Covid cases has now crossed 244 million as the race to vaccinate masses continue the world over.
The global Covid death toll and the total case count stand at 4,954,527 and 244,034,988, respectively, as of Tuesday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
The US has logged 45,544,971 cases and 737,316 deaths to date, according to the university data. The death toll in the United States is the highest in the world.
Brazil, which has been experiencing a new wave of cases since January, registered 21,735,560 cases as of Tuesday, while its Covid death toll has risen to 605,804.
Read: Covid may have killed up to 180k health workers: WHO
India's Covid-19 tally rose to 34,189,774 on Monday, as 14,306 new cases were registered in 24 hours across the country, as per the federal health ministry data.
Besides, as many as 443 deaths due to the pandemic were reported since Sunday morning, taking the total death toll to 454,712.
Most deaths, 363, were reported from the southern state of Kerala. "More than 70 percent cases (deaths) are due to comorbidities," said the federal health ministry.
Meanwhile, Russia has reported a record-high daily Covid-19 count of 37,930 infections over the past 24 hours, taking the national tally to 8,279,573, the official monitoring and response center said Monday.
The nationwide Covid-19 death toll grew by 1,069 to 231,669, and recoveries increased by 20,690 to 7,186,611.
Situation in Bangladesh
Covid-19 claimed five more lives and infected 289 more people in 24 hours till Monday morning.
Bangladesh last logged five Covid-related deaths on a single day on February 24 this year.
The fresh cases were detected after testing 20.773 samples, said the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
With this, the daily case positivity rate declined slightly to 1.39 percent from Sunday’s 1.49 percent.
With the fresh numbers, the Covid fatalities reached 27,828 while the caseload climbed to 1,567,981 in Bangladesh, according to the DGHS.
Read: DU to collaborate with AFC Biotech to develop Covid-19 vaccine
Among the latest deaths, two were men and three were women.
Of the 55 deaths recorded from October 18 to October 24, 12.7% received Covid shots while 87.3% did not, the DGHS added.
Comorbidities among Covid patients and deceased increased 6.1% this week compared to the previous week.
Comorbidity means the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient.
Also, the recovery rate increased slightly to 97.68 percent, with 364 more patients getting cured.
Covid in Bangladesh: fatalities, positivity rate increase slightly
Covid-19 claimed nine more lives and infected another 278 people in Bangladesh in 24 hours till Saturday morning.
The daily-case positivity increased slightly to 1.85 per cent from Friday’s 1.36 per cent after a streak of declining trend.
Read: Covid: 4 die, 232 infected in 24 hours -
With the fresh numbers, the Covid fatalities reached 27,814 while the caseload climbed to 1,567,417 in Bangladesh, according to the Directorate General of the Health services (DGHS).
Of the latest deaths, six were men and 3 were women.
Read: Covid-19: Bangladesh sees 41 deaths in 24 hours, lowest in 39 days
The new cases were detected after testing 15,042 samples during the 24-hour period.
However, the mortality rate remained static at 1.77 per cent compared to the same period.
Also, the recovery rate remained unchanged at 97.67 per cent, with 294 more patients getting cured.
ADB raises climate financing target to $100 bln by 2030
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has announced it is elevating its ambition to deliver climate financing to its developing member countries (DMCs) to $100 billion for the 2019–2030 period.
“The battle against climate change will be won or lost in Asia and the Pacific,” said ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa.
He said that the climate crisis is worsening daily, prompting many to call for increased climate finance.
Read: ADB appoints new country head for Bangladesh
“We are taking action to meet this call by elevating our ambition to $100 billion in cumulative climate finance from our own resources by 2030.”
In 2018, ADB committed to ensuring at least 75 percent of the total number of its operations support climate action and its own climate finance resources reach at least a cumulative $80 billion by 2030.
Today’s announcement elevates the ambition of this financing.
ADB expects the cumulative climate financing from its own resources in 2019–2021 to reach about $17 billion.
The expanded climate finance ambition is a key element of ADB’s efforts to support its DMCs. Facing the interconnected challenges of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the climate crisis, many DMCs are taking bold action to promote a green, resilient, and inclusive recovery.
Read: ADB to provide Bangladesh $250 million for Covid recovery
The additional $20 billion will provide support for the climate agenda in five main areas:
First, new avenues for climate mitigation, including energy storage, energy efficiency, and low-carbon transport. ADB expects its cumulative climate mitigation finance to reach $66 billion.
Second, a scale-up of transformative adaptation projects. Projects in climate-sensitive sectors, such as urban, agriculture, and water, will be designed with a primary purpose of effective climate adaptation and enhanced resilience. ADB expects its cumulative adaptation finance to reach $34 billion.
Third, an increase in climate finance in ADB’s private sector operations. This includes creating more commercially viable projects for both ADB and private investors.
The expansion will be underpinned by improvements in operational efficiencies, a post-pandemic recovery in market demand for financing, new technologies and innovations in climate financing, and new areas of business for private sector climate operations.
Read: ADB to loan $400 million to Bangladesh under agreement signed Monday
ADB intends to support these initiatives with $12 billion in cumulative private sector climate finance from its own resources and anticipated crowding in of an additional $18 billion to $30 billion.
Fourth, support for a green, resilient, and inclusive recovery from COVID-19, including through innovative financing platforms such as the ASEAN Catalytic Green Finance Facility and Green Recovery Platform, which are expected to leverage funds from capital markets and private sector investors for low-carbon infrastructure.
Fifth, support to advance reforms in DMCs to unlock actions through policy-based lending to support policies and institutions for enhanced climate resilience and climate mitigation.
Report concludes UK waited too long for virus lockdown
The British government waited too long to impose a lockdown in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, missing a chance to contain the disease and leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths, a parliamentary report concluded Tuesday.
The deadly delay resulted from ministers’ failure to question the recommendations of scientific advisers, resulting in a dangerous level of “groupthink” that caused them to dismiss the more aggressive strategies adopted in East and Southeast Asia, according to the joint report from the House of Commons’ science and health committees. It was only when Britain's National Health Service risked being overwhelmed by rapidly rising infections that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative government finally ordered a lockdown.
“There was a desire to avoid a lockdown because of the immense harm it would entail to the economy, normal health services and society,’’ the report said. “In the absence of other strategies such as rigorous case isolation, a meaningful test-and-trace operation, and robust border controls, a full lockdown was inevitable and should have come sooner.’’
Read:Moderna has no plans to share its COVID-19 vaccine recipe
The U.K. parliamentary report comes amid frustration with the timetable for a formal public inquiry into the government’s response to COVID-19, which Johnson says will start next spring.
Lawmakers said their inquiry was designed to uncover why Britain performed “significantly worse” than many other countries during the early days of the pandemic so that the U.K. could improve its response to the ongoing threat from COVID-19 and prepare for future threats.
The 150-page report is based on testimony from 50 witnesses, including former Health Secretary Matt Hancock and former government insider Dominic Cummings. It was unanimously approved by 22 lawmakers from the three largest parties in Parliament: the governing Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party and the Scottish National Party.
The committees praised the government’s early focus on vaccines as the ultimate way out of the pandemic and its decision to invest in vaccine development. These decisions led to Britain’s successful inoculation program, which has seen almost 80% of people 12 and over now fully vaccinated.
“Millions of lives will ultimately be saved as a result of the global vaccine effort in which the U.K. has played a leading part,” the committees said.
But they also criticized the government’s test-and-trace program, saying its slow, uncertain and often chaotic performance hampered Britain’s response to the pandemic.
Read: Merck asks US FDA to authorize promising anti-COVID pill
The government’s strategy during the first three months of the crisis reflected official scientific advice that widespread infection was inevitable given that testing capacity was limited; that there was no immediate prospect for a vaccine; and the belief that the public wouldn’t accept a lengthy lockdown, the report said. As a result, the government sought merely to manage the spread of the virus, instead of trying to stop it altogether.
The report described this as a “serious early error” that the U.K. shared with many countries in Europe and North America.
“Accountability in a democracy depends on elected decision-makers not just taking advice, but examining, questioning and challenging it before making their own decisions,” the committees said. “Although it was a rapidly changing situation, given the large number of deaths predicted, it was surprising the initially fatalistic assumptions about the impossibility of suppressing the virus were not challenged until it became clear the NHS would be overwhelmed.”
Trish Greenhalgh, a professor of primary care health services at the University of Oxford, said the report “hints at a less-than-healthy’’ relationship between government and scientific bodies. With COVID-19 still killing hundreds of people every week in Britain, advisory committees continue to debate exactly what evidence is “sufficiently definitive” to be considered certain, she said.
Read:‘Mission 100 Days’ launched to curb Covid during festivals in India
“Uncertainty is a defining feature of crises...,’’ Greenhalgh said. “Dare we replace ‘following the science’ with ‘deliberating on what best to do when the problem is urgent but certainty eludes us’? This report suggests that unless we wish to continue to repeat the mistakes of the recent past, we must.”
Even senior officials like Cummings and Hancock told the committees they were reluctant to push back against scientific consensus.
Hancock said as early as Jan. 28, 2020, he found it difficult to push for widespread testing of people who didn’t show symptoms of COVID-19 because scientific advisers said it wouldn’t be useful.
“I was in a situation of not having hard evidence that a global scientific consensus of decades was wrong but having an instinct that it was,” he testified. “I bitterly regret that I did not overrule that scientific advice.”
Covid in Bangladesh: 23 more lose lives, 703 get infected
Twenty-three more people died of Covid-19 and 703 new cases were detected in 24 hours till Wednesday morning.
On Tuesday, the country logged 23 Covid-linked deaths and 694 fresh cases.
The fresh cases were detected after testing 24,376 samples.
Read: Bangladesh calls for fair, balanced IP regime system to fight COVID
With this, the daily-case positivity rate slightly rose to 2.88 percent from Tuesday’s 2.72 percent, said the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The daily-case positivity rate in the country remained below 5 per cent for the 13th consecutive day.
Read: Covid-19 in Bangladesh: 10 more deaths
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), if the daily-case positivity rate remains at 5 per cent or below for 14 days it is considered to be safe for mass unlocking.
In Bangladesh, the daily-case positivity rate reached its peak 32.55 per cent on July 24 this year.
The fresh numbers took the total fatalities to 27,635 while the caseload mounted to 15,60,155, said the DGHS.
However, the mortality rate remained static at 1.77 per cent.
The recovery rate slightly increased to 97.50 per cent with the recovery of 817 more patients during the period.
So far, 15,21,113 people have recovered from the deadly virus infections, the DGHS added.
Biden, McConnell get COVID-19 boosters, encourage vaccines
Seventy-eight-year-old Joe Biden and 79-year-old Mitch McConnell got their booster shots Monday, the Democratic president and the Republican Senate leader urging Americans across the political spectrum to get vaccinated or plus up with boosters when eligible for the extra dose of protection.
The shots, administered just hours apart on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, came on the first workday after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration recommended a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine for Americans 65 and older and approved them for others with preexisting medical conditions and high-risk work environments.
Both leaders said that even though the booster doses provide more enduring protection against the virus, they weren’t the silver bullet to ending the pandemic.
Read: Quad on track to produce 1 bn vax doses in India: Biden
“Boosters are important, but the most important thing we need to do is get more people vaccinated,” Biden said.
Nearly 25% of eligible Americans aged 12 and older haven’t received a single dose of the vaccines. They are bearing the brunt of a months-long surge in cases and deaths brought about by the more transmissible delta variant of the virus that has killed 688,000 in the U.S. since the pandemic began.
“Like I’ve been saying for months, these safe and effective vaccines are the way to defend ourselves and our families from this terrible virus,” said McConnell, a polio survivor.
Biden got his first shot on Dec. 21 and his second dose three weeks later, on Jan. 11, along with his wife, Jill Biden. The first lady, who is 70, received her Pfizer booster dose in private at the White House on Monday afternoon, said her spokesperson, Michael LaRosa.
Read:Biden aims to enlist allies in tackling climate, COVID, more
“Now, I know it doesn’t look like it, but I am over 65 — I wish I — way over,” the president joked. “And that’s why I’m getting my booster shot today.”
Biden has championed booster doses since the summer as the U.S. experienced a sharp rise in coronavirus cases driven by the delta variant. While the vast majority of cases continue to occur among unvaccinated people, regulators pointed to evidence from Israel and early studies in the U.S. showing that protection against so-called breakthrough cases was vastly improved by a third dose of the Pfizer shot.
But the aggressive American push for boosters, before many poorer nations have been able to provide even a modicum of protection for their most vulnerable populations, has drawn the ire of the World Health Organization and some aid groups, which have called on the U.S. to pause third shots to free up supply for the global vaccination effort.
Biden said last week that the U.S. was purchasing another 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine — for a total of 1 billion over the coming year — to donate to less well-off nations.
Biden took questions from reporters about his vaccination experience and matters of the day as a military nurse injected the dose into his arm.
Read: Top doctors say not so fast to Biden’s boosters-for-all plan
The president said he did not have side effects after his first or second shots and hoped for the same experience with his third.
Vice President Kamala Harris, 56, received the Moderna vaccine, for which federal regulators have not yet authorized boosters — but they are expected to in the coming weeks. Regulators are also expecting data soon about the safety and efficacy of a booster for the single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot.
At least 2.66 million Americans have received booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine since mid-August, according to the CDC. About 100 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 through the Pfizer shot. U.S. regulators recommend getting the boosters at least six months after the second shot of the initial two-dose series.
COVID-19 vaccine boosters could mean billions for drugmakers
Billions more in profits are at stake for some vaccine makers as the U.S. moves toward dispensing COVID-19 booster shots to shore up Americans’ protection against the virus.
How much the manufacturers stand to gain depends on how big the rollout proves to be.
U.S. health officials late on Thursday endorsed booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine for all Americans 65 and older — along with tens of millions of younger people who are at higher risk from the coronavirus because of health conditions or their jobs.
Officials described the move as a first step. Boosters will likely be offered even more broadly in the coming weeks or months, including boosters of vaccines made by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. That, plus continued growth in initial vaccinations, could mean a huge gain in sales and profits for Pfizer and Moderna in particular.
Read:Global leaders commit support for equitable access to Covid vaccines
“The opportunity quite frankly is reflective of the billions of people around the world who would need a vaccination and a boost,” Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said.
Wall Street is taking notice. The average forecast among analysts for Moderna’s 2022 revenue has jumped 35% since President Joe Biden laid out his booster plan in mid-August.
Most of the vaccinations so far in the U.S. have come from Pfizer, which developed its shot with Germany’s BioNTech, and Moderna. They have inoculated about 99 million and 68 million people, respectively. Johnson & Johnson is third with about 14 million people.
No one knows yet how many people will get the extra shots. But Morningstar analyst Karen Andersen expects boosters alone to bring in about $26 billion in global sales next year for Pfizer and BioNTech and around $14 billion for Moderna if they are endorsed for nearly all Americans.
Those companies also may gain business from people who got other vaccines initially. In Britain, which plans to offer boosters to everyone over 50 and other vulnerable people, an expert panel has recommended that Pfizer’s shot be the primary choice, with Moderna as the alternative.
Andersen expects Moderna, which has no other products on the market, to generate a roughly $13 billion profit next year from all COVID-19 vaccine sales if boosters are broadly authorized.
Potential vaccine profits are harder to estimate for Pfizer, but company executives have said they expect their pre-tax adjusted profit margin from the vaccine to be in the “high 20s” as a percentage of revenue. That would translate to a profit of around $7 billion next year just from boosters, based on Andersen’s sales prediction.
Read:India to restart Covid vaccine exports to COVAX, neighbours
J&J and Europe’s AstraZeneca have said they don’t intend to profit from their COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
For Pfizer and Moderna, the boosters could be more profitable than the original doses because they won’t come with the research and development costs the companies incurred to get the vaccines on the market in the first place.
WBB Securities CEO Steve Brozak said the booster shots will represent “almost pure profit” compared with the initial doses.
Drugmakers aren’t the only businesses that could see a windfall from delivering boosters. Drugstore chains CVS Health and Walgreens could bring in more than $800 million each in revenue, according to Jeff Jonas, a portfolio manager with Gabelli Funds.
Jonas noted that the drugstores may not face competition from mass vaccination clinics this time around, and the chains are diligent about collecting customer contact information. That makes it easy to invite people back for boosters.
Drugmakers are also developing COVID-19 shots that target certain variants of the virus, and say people might need annual shots like the ones they receive for the flu. All of that could make the vaccines a major recurring source of revenue.
The COVID-19 vaccines have already done much better than their predecessors.
Pfizer said in July it expects revenue from its COVID-19 vaccine to reach $33.5 billion this year, an estimate that could change depending on the impact of boosters or the possible expansion of shots to elementary school children.
Read: Pfizer says COVID-19 vaccine works in kids ages 5 to 11
That would be more than five times the $5.8 billion racked up last year by the world’s most lucrative vaccine — Pfizer’s Prevnar13, which protects against pneumococcal disease.
It also would dwarf the $19.8 billion brought in last year by AbbVie’s rheumatoid arthritis treatment Humira, widely regarded as the world’s top-selling drug.
This bodes well for future vaccine development, noted Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan.
Vaccines normally are nowhere near as profitable as treatments, Gordon said. But the success of the COVID-19 shots could draw more drugmakers and venture capitalists into the field.
“The vaccine business is more attractive, which, for those of us who are going to need vaccines, is good,” Gordon said.
Is the delta variant of the coronavirus worse for kids?
Is the delta variant of the coronavirus worse for kids?
No, experts say there’s no strong evidence yet that it makes children and teens sicker than earlier versions of the virus, although delta has led to a surge in infections among kids because it’s more contagious.
Read: 'Sputnik V's efficacy against Delta varies from 83-94%'
Delta’s ability to spread more easily makes it more of a risk to children and underscores the need for masks in schools and vaccinations for those who are old enough, said Dr. Juan Dumois, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Weekly infection rates among U.S. children earlier this month topped 250,000, surpassing the wintertime peak, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association. Since the pandemic began, more than 5 million children in the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19.
The delta variant has been identified in at least 180 countries, according to the World Health Organization. In many of them, the spike in infections has also meant an increase in hospitalizations in young children and teens.
In the U.S., the hospitalization rate for COVID-19 was less than 2 per 100,000 children in late August and early September — similar to the peak last winter, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the portion of kids hospitalized with severe disease hasn’t changed significantly.
Read:'10 times fewer virus particles needed to catch Delta variant'
The sheer numbers can make it seem like children are getting sicker with the delta variant, but experts say that does not appear to be the case. Most infected kids have mild infections or no symptoms and do not need to be hospitalized.
COVID-19 vaccines continue to provide protection against delta. Among children 12 and older — who are eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations — the weekly hospitalization rate in July was 10 times higher for the unvaccinated than those who have had the shots, CDC data show.
CDC panel grapples with who needs a COVID-19 booster shot
An influential panel of advisers to the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention grappled Wednesday with the question of which Americans should get COVID-19 booster shots, with some members wondering if the decision should be put off for a month in hopes of more evidence.
The doubts and uncertainties suggested yet again that the matter of whether to dispense extra doses to shore up Americans’ protection against the coronavirus is more complicated scientifically than the Biden administration may have realized when it outlined plans a month ago for an across-the-board rollout of boosters. The rollout was supposed to have begun this week.
Much of the discussion at the meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices focused on the possibility of a scaled-back booster program targeted to older people or perhaps health care workers. But even then, some of the experts said that the data on whether boosters are actually needed, precisely who should get them and when was not clear-cut.
“What would be the downside” of simply waiting a month in hopes of more information? asked Dr. Sarah Long of Drexel University.
Read: Top doctors say not so fast to Biden’s boosters-for-all plan
The two-day meeting had been scheduled to resume on Thursday, but it was not immediately clear whether that would happen.
The meeting came days after a different advisory group — this one serving the Food and Drug Administration — overwhelmingly rejected a sweeping White House plan to dispense third shots to nearly everyone. Instead, that panel endorsed booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine only for senior citizens and those at high risk from the virus.
While the COVID-19 vaccines continue to offer strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death, immunity against milder infection seems to be dropping months after vaccination.
“I want to highlight that in September of 2021 in the United States, deaths from COVID-19 are largely vaccine-preventable with the primary series of any of the three vaccines available,” said CDC advisory panel member Dr. Matthew Daley, a researcher at Kaiser Permanente Colorado.
And the public must understand that no matter how good a COVID-19 vaccine is, when it comes to milder infections, “it is unlikely that we will prevent everything,” said Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of Vanderbilt University.
Several panelists said another concern is the public confusion that could result if they recommend a booster only for certain recipients of the Pfizer vaccine. That could leave people vaccinated with Moderna or Johnson & Johnson shots wondering what to do.
The meeting was devoted to Pfizer booster shots only. Moderna’s application to dispense third doses is not as far along in the process. And a major U.S. study on whether mixing-and-matching booster doses is safe and effective isn’t finished.
Read: US panel backs COVID-19 boosters only for seniors, high-risk
Many experts are torn about the need for boosters because they see the COVID-19 vaccines working as expected, even amid the spread of the highly contagious delta variant. It is normal for virus-blocking antibodies to be highest right after vaccination and then wane over the following months.
“We don’t care if antibodies wane. You care what is the minimum” needed for protection, Long said.
Yet no one knows the antibody level threshold below which someone’s risk for infection suddenly jumps. Even then, the body has backup defenses.
Antibody production and even those backup defenses don’t form as robustly in older people. But it’s impossible to pinpoint the age at which that becomes a problem, CDC microbiologist Natalie Thornburg told the committee.
Ultimately the committee must decide who is considered at high enough risk for an extra dose.
CDC officials presented data from several U.S. studies, saying there is growing evidence of a decline in the effectiveness of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in preventing new COVID-19 infections in some groups, most notably people 65 and older and health care workers who got shots early in the vaccination campaign.
There’s also a hint that at age 75, there may be some decline in protection against hospitalization. But the CDC said there is little information on waning immunity in younger people with chronic medical problems.
Some panelists also wondered about boosters for health care workers who can’t come to work if they get even a mild infection.
Read: Global vaccine disparity gets sharper amid talk of boosters
“We don’t have enough health care workers to take care of the unvaccinated. They just keep coming,” Talbot said.
Another question was how many months after the second shot the booster should be given. Scientists have talked about six months or eight months.
As for booster safety, serious side effects are exceedingly rare with the first two doses. And Pfizer pointed to 2.8 million booster doses given in Israel, mostly to people 60 and older, with fewer reports of annoying side effects like pain or fever with the third dose than with the earlier shots. There was one report of a rare risk, heart inflammation, that is sometimes seen in younger men.
In the U.S., more than 24,000 people who have volunteered for a CDC vaccine safety tracking system have reported getting an extra dose, and likewise have reported no red flags.