The Food and Drug Administration has approved a second COVID-19 booster dose of either Pfizer or Moderna for older people and some immunocompromised individuals.
This is the fourth Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccine dose approved, CNBC News reported.
The FDA previously authorized a single booster dose for immunocompromised people after they had finished the primary, three-dose vaccination series, the FDA news release reported.
This new booster dose is meant to protect those who are at higher risk for severe medical complications from COVID.
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“This action will now make a second booster dose of these vaccines available to other populations at higher risk for severe disease, hospitalization and death. Emerging evidence suggests that a second booster dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine improves protection against severe COVID-19 and is not associated with new safety concerns,” the FDA reported.
However, as CNBC News reported, the decision to approve a second booster came without the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee meeting. This is “a rare move the agency has made more frequently over the course of the pandemic to expand uses of already-approved Covid vaccines,” CNBC News reported.
But the FDA believes that some weakening of vaccine protection over time leaves elderly and immunocompromised individuals in greater danger.
“Current evidence suggests some waning of protection over time against serious outcomes from Covid-19 in older and immunocompromised individuals,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said, the FDA news release reported.
“Based on an analysis of emerging data, a second booster dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna Covid-19 vaccine could help increase protection levels for these higher-risk individuals,” Marks added.
Marks also encouraged anyone who has not had the initial booster to get it.
In addition, he explained in a call with reporters that this fourth dose reduces overall risk of COVID.
“This fourth booster dose is something that evidence that we have now from Israel suggests that by getting this, one can reduce the risk of hospitalization and death in this population of older individuals,” Marks said, CNBC News reported.
But one Johns Hopkins…
