Booster shots may hurt first shot efforts

NEW YORK — The spread of COVID-19 vaccination requirements across the U.S. hasn’t had the desired effect so far, with the number of Americans getting their first shots plunging in recent weeks. And some experts worry that the move to dispense boosters could just make matters worse.

The fear is that the rollout of booster shots will lead some people to question the effectiveness of the vaccine in the first place.

“Many of my patients are already saying, ‘If we need a third dose, what was the point?’ ” said Dr. Jason Goldman, a physician in Coral Springs, Fla.

The average daily count of Americans getting a first dose of vaccine has been falling for six weeks, plummeting more than 50 percent from about 480,000 in early August to under 230,000 by the middle of last week, according to the most recently available federal data.

An estimated 70 million vaccine-eligible Americans have yet to start vaccinations, despite a summer surge in infections, hospitalizations and deaths driven by the delta variant. student was notified more than a year ago that she won a coveted spot to seek one of up to 55,000 visas that the U.S. government gives out each year in a lottery to increase the country’s diversity. She filed the paperwork to a State Department processing center in Kentucky and waited to be scheduled for an interview at the U.S. embassy in Guyana, which handles Cubans’ visa applications.

But the interview never came. Now, the visas are set to expire Thursday, leaving her and her husband in limbo.

“We are desperate, asking for someone to help us because we are here in the middle of nowhere,” said Fuentes Matos, who is waiting in Guyana for an appointment and is one of thousands suing the U.S. government over the delays. “We are stuck in this country, and we can’t even go back to Cuba.”

More than 20,000 people have sued after they were declared winners of the visa lottery and turned in the required paperwork but never got an interview or a shot at coming to the United States. The government has issued about a quarter of the visas allotted for the fiscal year ending in September after processing was halted during the coronavirus pandemic and then resumed at a much slower pace as other visa applications got priority, their attorneys said.