There’s no need for Covid booster doses right now, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health said Friday.
“Let me tell you where we are: the data is very clear, if you’ve gotten your two shots of Moderna or Pfizer or single shot of J&J, you have a very high level of protection against all variants, including delta,” said Dr. Ashish Jha. “I have not seen any evidence, so far, that anybody needs a third shot.”
“If that evidence emerges, and obviously we’re going to want to take that into consideration, in my mind, I think there’s little likelihood that we’re going to need third shots for most people,” Jha said.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug
Administration issued a joint statement that said Americans who are fully vaccinated do not need a booster shot.
“Americans who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster shot at this time. FDA, CDC, and [the National Institutes of Health] are engaged in a science-based, rigorous process to consider whether or when a booster might be necessary,” read a joint statement released Thursday evening.
Although much is known about the safety of the flu vaccine, the committee’s chair, Dr. Jose Romero, pointed out that public health officials do not wait until the virus has spread widely to vaccinate against it.
Romero specifically mentioned the delta version, saying, “We should begin to explore employing these boosters before we have evidence of sickness from these variants, assuming this continues to be a persistent virus with periodic recirculation.”
Dr. Doran Fink, the deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration’s division of vaccines, stated during the conference that the safety of a second dose would be assessed, along with the severity of any side effects.
How Soon would COVID-19 Vaccines be Able to Halt the Pandemic?
While COVID-19 vaccines are a vital component in the fight against the pandemic, they are not sufficient on their own.
Surveillance, contact tracing, isolation, and individual protective behaviours such as keeping a distance of at least 1 metre from others, wearing a mask that fits properly over the nose and mouth, avoiding poorly ventilated places and settings, staying at home if ill, covering coughs and sneezes, and frequently washing hands remain essential to breaking the chain of transmission.
Multiple factors will determine how much of an effect COVID-19 vaccines have on the pandemic. To name just a few examples, there is the success of the vaccines themselves, the efficiency with which they are approved, manufactured, and distributed, the possibility of new strains being created, and the rate at which individuals become vaccinated.
This line of question is serious to understand and raise because we do not know what the double dose of the vaccine entails. Thus the requirement of some solid evidence to back up this is utmost and required. So this question is still lingering at the minds of the people. A definitive answer has not yet been reached as of now.
