Daily US Times: A scientific advisory committee of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recommended booster doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for people 65 and over, and those at high risk.
But the panel voted against recommending a booster jab for everyone aged 16 and over.
The outcome is a blow for President Biden. The US president said widespread doses would be available by next week if approved.
The panel of the FDA voted 16 to 3 against the booster doses for those aged 16 and over.
Many of the panel’s independent experts – including infectious disease experts – said scientific data suggested a widespread roll-out of vaccines was not warranted.
Ahead of a meeting on Friday, some specialists said they believed that booster jabs were unlikely to have a significant impact on the course of the pandemic.
Dr Monica Gandhi, professor at the University of California San Francisco and an infectious diseases physician, said she was not convinced by the immunology research.
She said: “Antibodies do come down over time, but [the human body] has the blueprint to make more.”
Some have also said that additional doses against the Covuid-19 would be more useful if distributed to parts of the world where many have yet to receive their first or second doses of vaccine.
She said: “If you take away the moral and ethical questions, there’s still the public health question of where the next variant is going to come from. It’s likely to come from places with low vaccination rates.”
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