Many of America’s leading vaccine experts are questioning just how helpful booster vaccines will be to people under age 65 or not otherwise at high-risk of a severe COVID-19 case.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially recommended last week that Americans get boosters if they are aged 65 or older or are 18 or older and live in a long-term care facility, work in a high-risk occupation or have underlying health conditions. Some of the very officials at the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who were involved in the booster approval process, though, aren’t convinced that the extra shots are the way out of the pandemic.
“These are not evidence-based recommendations,” Dr. Sarah Long, a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and pediatric infectious disease expert at Drexel University College of Medicine told The New York Times. “We are in a very difficult position to do much of anything other than what everybody has already announced that we’ve done,” she added, apparently referencing the fact that the Biden administration announced boosters would be available before they were approved by health authorities.
