Scientists: Most don’t need COVID booster
COVID-19 vaccines work so well that most people don’t yet need a booster, an all-star panel of scientists from around the world said in a review that’s likely to fuel the debate over whether to use them.
Governments would be better served to focus on immunizing the unvaccinated and to wait for more data on which boosters, and at what doses, would be most effective, the authors, who included two prominent U.S. Food and Drug Administration experts, argued in the medical journal The Lancet. They based their assessment on a wide range of real-world observational studies as well as data from clinical trials.
“None of the studies has provided credible evidence of substantially declining protection against severe disease,” the authors wrote. There could also be additional side-effect risks if boosters are introduced too soon or too broadly, they said.
The review comes as most countries with ample vaccine supplies debate whether to allocate doses for booster shots to prop up immunity and potentially help stop the spread of the more infectious delta variant. The U.S. plans to roll out booster shots starting Monday, though the plan still needs sign-off from the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among the scientists behind the Lancet article were Marion Gruber, who leads the FDA’S Office of Vaccines Research and Review, and her deputy Philip Krause. Both have said they would step down later this year. Gruber and Krause were two of a group of FDA staff who last year pushed back against pressure by the Trump administration to speed up the authorization of the COVID vaccines, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The World Health Organization’s Soumya Swaminathan, Ana-maria Henao-restrepo and Mike Ryan also worked on the review. The WHO has pushed against broad use of boosters, saying it would make better publichealth sense to focus on immunizing those who haven’t gotten any shots yet – whether because of anti-vaccine sentiment in countries with ample reserves, or because they live in places with little access to shots.
Scientists are by no means unanimous on the topic of boosters. Even a small reduction in efficacy against the spread of COVID can strain a health care system, and “there is therefore no ‘one size fits all’ approach,” said Azra Ghani, chair in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London, who wasn’t involved with the review.
A U.K. government advisory panel is set to recommend soon whether to move forward with broad use of a third vaccine dose.
Britain is already offering boosters to those with severely weakened immune systems, as are many European
separate rocket launches late Sunday and early Monday, saying at least two of them were intercepted by its rocket defenses. It said it attacked a number of Hamas targets in retaliation. There were no reports of casualties on either side.
In other violence, the Israeli army said an assailant attempted to stab a soldier at a busy intersection in the occupied West Bank. It said that soldiers shot the attacker, who was taken to a hospital. No further details were immediately available.
In downtown Jerusalem, meanwhile, police said a 17-year-old Palestinian boy stabbed and wounded two people near the city’s central bus station.
Jerusalem police chief Doron Turjeman said the assailant was shot by an officer. The boy suffered a serious gunshot wound to the chest.
Last week’s prison break appears to have heightened tensions across the region, with Palestinians staging a number of protests in solidarity with the men. In Palestinian society, nearly every family has seen a member imprisoned by Israel, and the thousands of prisoners held by Israel are widely seen as heroes paying a price for the national cause.
Over the weekend, Israel caught four of the six Palestinian inmates who tunneled out of a maximum security prison on Sept. 6.
Palestinian militants reacted to the arrests with rocket fire. Israel’s search for the last two prisoners is continuing.