Government advisers are debating whether to recommend extra doses of the Pfizer vaccine, a key step toward the Biden administration's plan to dispense COVID-19 booster shots. Scientists have been divided over the need for boosters and who should get them.
Scientists inside and outside the government have been divided in recent days over the need for boosters and who should get them, and the World Health Organization has strongly objected to rich nations giving a third round of shots when poor countries don’t have enough vaccine for their first.
Some group members have made clear they favor giving third doses to older people, nursing home residents and front-line health care workers, rather than all adults. Dr. Peter Marks, FDA’s top vaccine regulator, acknowledged the intense disagreements in opening remarks to the advisory panel. But that was before FDA staff scientists had completed their own assessments of the data. Some experts questioned whether Biden was breaking his own pledge to “follow the science” on COVID-19 by getting out ahead of government scientists.Earlier this week, two top FDA vaccine reviewers joined a group of international scientists in publishing an editorial rejecting the need for boosters in healthy people.
The Biden booster plan has raised major ethical concerns, given the dire shortages of vaccine in impoverished parts of the world. But the administration has argued that the plan is not an us-or-them choice and noted that the U.S. is supplying large quantities of vaccine to the rest of the globe.
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