Will You Be Getting A Moderna Or Johnson & Johnson Booster This Month? CDC Now Reviewing Possibility
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be reviewing data from vaccine manufacturers Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Moderna to determine if their booster shots will be made available to the public soon.
A set of meetings is scheduled for Oct. 20-21 of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to make the decision. A second set of meetings of the panel is set for Nov. 2-3 to discuss the possibility of making the COVID-19 vaccines available for children.
Only Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine booster shots have received emergency use authorization and are limited to seniors aged 65 and older, Americans who live or work in high-risk environments, or those 18 and older with underlying health conditions.
Moderna was removed from the Biden administration’s initial plans for a rollout of vaccine booster shots on Sept. 20 after regulators worried that they did not have enough data from the manufacturer to recommend it for use. The company previously submitted initial data to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Sept. 1 for authorization of their boosters.
In the European Union, both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech’s boosters have been approved for use by those 18 and older this week.
J&J submitted an amendment for emergency authorization to the FDA to approve a booster for its single-dose vaccine. Last month, J&J said that its booster shot has a 94% effectiveness against COVID-19 when administered two months after the first dose and that it increases antibody levels by as much as four to six times compared with a single dose of the vaccine.
The CDC and FDA issue separate recommendations for the use of vaccines and booster shots for patients.
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