CDC advisers recommending Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID boosters
WASHINGTON — Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday unanimously recommended the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson boosters for tens of millions of Americans deemed vulnerable because of their age, health or occupation to bolster their protection against the coronavirus.
The panel also said that consumers should be allowed to choose from any of the three boosters now authorized in the United States, no matter which vaccine they first received. Members directed the CDC to provide further guidance to consumers and clinicians about who might benefit from choosing one booster over another, noting that the risks and benefits vary based on age and sex, among other factors.
“I think the opportunity for these [mix and match] boosts [is] priceless,” said Helen Keipp Talbot, an infectious-disease doctor at Vanderbilt University and panel member.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is expected to sign off on the recommendations later Thursday evening, allowing clinicians and pharmacies to begin giving booster doses of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, in addition to the already authorized Pfizer-BioNTech shots, to nearly 100 million eligible Americans.
Action by Walensky — following a green light Wednesday from federal regulators — would largely fulfill the administration’s promise to make boosters of all three vaccines available to Americans, albeit a month later than promised and for a smaller group. The administration’s focus on boosters came as the highly contagious delta variant sickened millions and killed tens of thousands, and also reflected concern about waning immunity from the vaccines.
A CDC sign-off on the additional boosters as well as the flexibility to mix and match the shots would give greater leeway not just to consumers, but to clinicians and pharmacies offering them to vulnerable populations. Health officials have repeatedly sought ways to make it easier for people to get another dose, especially those who have had side effects from one brand, or who worry about risks associated with a particular shot.
The availability of boosters would be particularly welcome to the 15 million recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, many of whom have been particularly fearful of breakthrough infections given that shot’s lower level of protection compared with the messenger RNA vaccines.
“I agree that those who received a [Johnson & Johnson] vaccine should receive a second dose - I would prefer that those individuals get an mRNA vaccine” rather than a second Johnson & Johnson shot, said panel member Pablo J. Sanchez, a pediatrician at Ohio State University.
Interchangeability of shots is also likely to speed booster vaccination in nursing homes and other institutional settings where residents received different shots during the early rollout. The Pfizer-BioNTech booster is already in use since it was authorized and recommended last month.
The advisory panel’s recommendation was similar to Wednesday’s action by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA did not take a position on whether people should stay with the original vaccine or switch to another one, saying it did not have the data to make such judgments.