The FDA's Vaccine Expert Panel Recommends Approval of a J&J Booster for Anyone Who Had an Initial Shot
for people over age 65 and for adults who are at higher risk of severe COVID-19 and its complications, such as people with underlying health conditions, as well as health care and other essential workers whose jobs may put them at increased risk of exposure and therefore more severe COVID-19.J&J’s request was a complex one, and the committee had to decide whether to recommend the booster two months or six months after the single dose.
One of the committee members, Dr. Hayley Gans, professor of pediatrics at Stanford University, noted the apparent paradox inherent in J&J’s request for an authorization of a booster: if a single dose of J&J provided this sort of consistent protection, especially against severe disease, why would a booster be needed?
In theory, one goal of the additional shots could be to raise immunity levels to the point where people are less likely to transmit the virus if they do get infected, but there aren’t strong enough data to show that vaccines actually do that.
As part of that argument the companies highlighted what they see as the defining feature of their vaccine: the triggering of the T-cell response, which is a sort of an immunologic backup to the immediate SWAT team of antibodies that the body deploys when it first encounters a new virus; antibodies can flood the zone quickly but tend to wane after time if the virus isn’t constantly present.
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