The FDA and CDC offered little guidance about who should get the newly authorized second COVID-19 booster shot. We break it down.
So you took the first COVID-19 vaccine that was offered to you and — if it was one of the two mRNA vaccines available in the U.S. — you went back on schedule to get the second jab. When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended a booster shot, you got that without delay, too.
The CDC has offered some examples of people with likely immune impairment who qualify for a second booster shot. The list includes people in active cancer treatment, those who have had a stem cell transplant or solid organ transplant and are getting immunity-suppressing drugs to prevent rejection, people with advanced or untreated HIV or those with immunodeficiencies such as DiGeorge syndrome or Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, and people who take high-dose corticosteroids.
That’s because the initial course of vaccination should have already produced enough antibodies to teach your immune system roughly what the novel coronavirus looks like. That prepares a more durable second line of immune defense — called cellular immunity — to field a fresh army of antibodies next time the virus that causes COVID-19 threatens to invade.
It was with these variations in mind that the FDA adopted what experts call a “permissive” emergency use authorization — essentially one that errs on the side of making a product available to more people than may actually need it.A. Yes, some. Israel has given the United States its best look-ahead at what might be expected. It offered mRNA vaccine exclusively to its citizens for the first two doses, and then boosted its population not once but twice.
So “fully vaccinated” status continued to confer a high level of protection. And people who’d had their first booster of mRNA vaccine fared a bit better still: They had 94% protection against those worst-case outcomes. “Realistically, if people are concerned that because of the treatments they are on, they are immunosuppressed, it’s probably reasonable to get another dose,” Kotton said. “I don’t have concerns about significant risk from boosters.”