US buys 200 million extra doses of Moderna vaccine, in case booster shots are needed
ATLANTA - You are fully vaccinated. So, will you still need another booster shot down the road?
The US government is planning on it, purchasing 200 million additional doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine as a contingency plan, in case the immune protection offered by the shots begins to wane.
Health officials are also carefully tracking emerging variants of the coronavirus that are hitting countries like Britain hard.
It is still not clear whether or when boosters will be needed.
The country's top coronavirus expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, says whether boosters are necessary will depend on the durability of the current vaccines.
"I want to emphasize, by durability, I don't mean the vaccines now are not effective," Dr. Fauci says. "We're talking about the length of the protection, which we know is very high right now."
Researchers are studying immunity levels in those who have been fully vaccinated to try to figure how long the protection from the vaccine will last.
Dr. Fauci says if immunity levels of those vaccinated drop below a critical baseline, or if there is an increase in breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated people, boosters may be recommended.
Vaccine manufacturers have been developing and testing booster vaccines for the original vaccines and for new strains of the virus.
"So right now, what we're doing, is we are doing clinical trials with boosters, boosters against the wild-type and boosters against the variant-specific boosts, and the determination is not made by the drug companies," Dr. Fauci says. "The determination is made by the public health needs of individuals who have been vaccinated, and whether or not we are going to have durable immunity."
Dr. Fauci says it is too early to project when boosters might be needed.
"That could be a year, that could be 18 months, that could be much longer," Fauci says. "We're going to have to follow it, and we will act according to information we get from the parameters that I just mentioned."
A CDC vaccine advisory panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, will meet Friday to talk about vaccine boosters and discuss about 300 reported cases of heart problems in younger adults who have been vaccinated.
Thursday, the Biden Administration also announced the US will invest $2.3 billion is developing antiviral medications that may be able to treat people infected with COVID-19 down the road.
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