CDC advisers back rollout of COVID vaccine boosters from Moderna and J&J

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A health care worker administers a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine Thursday at Life of Hope Center in New York City.

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Shots — Health News
The FDA authorizes Moderna and J&J COVID vaccine boosters

After a brief break late in the deliberations, CDC staff returned with revised voting questions that were neutral on which vaccine should be used as a booster for the J&J and Moderna vaccines. The revised questions don’t explicitly mention which vaccine should be used as a booster, which clears the way for mix-and-match boosting without restrictions.

According to the CDC, more than 189 million people in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, about 57% of the population. Hospitalization rates are nine to 15 times higher in unvaccinated compared with vaccinated adults, according to CDC data.

Still, there are reasons to think that boosters could be useful in some groups of people.

There has been a drop in Moderna’s effectiveness against infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus over time and in the face of the delta variant. Protection against hospitalization has remained generally strong, though there have been some declines seen in older people.

For the J&J vaccine, the protection against infection and hospitalization has been pretty steady, the CDC pointed out. But the vaccine has been less effective overall than the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, so a booster can push protection from the J&J vaccine to a higher level.

The committee wrestled with the tradeoff in risks and benefits for boosters in some groups. People 65 and older have the most to gain and relatively little increased risk. For the Moderna vaccine, protection has remained pretty strong for younger people and their risks for heart inflammation are higher, especially in males.

For the J&J vaccine, there were concerns about rare blood clots following vaccination that are a higher risk for younger women. But there are benefits from a booster, overall, because of increased protection from the second dose.