US regulators have opened up Covid-19 booster shots to all US adults, expanding the government’s campaign to shore up protection and get ahead of rising coronavirus cases that may worsen with the holidays.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, signed off on the expanded eligibility on Friday evening after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) broadened its authorization of booster doses to all adults who had received their second shot of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine at least six months prior.
Regulators had previously authorized boosters for all recipients of Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose vaccine, two months after their primary dose.
“Booster shots have demonstrated the ability to safely increase people’s protection against infection and severe outcomes and are an important public health tool to strengthen our defenses against the virus as we enter the winter holidays,” Walensky said in a statement.
Pfizer and Moderna announced the FDA’s decision after at least 10 states already had started offering boosters to all adults.
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The latest action simplifies what until now has been a confusing list of who’s eligible by allowing anyone 18 or older to choose either company’s booster six months after their last dose – regardless of which vaccine they had first.
All three Covid-19 vaccines used in the US still offer strong protection against severe illness including hospitalization and death, but protection against infection can wane with time.
Vaccinating new people is the most effective way to reduce transmission. Nearly 59% of the US public is fully vaccinated, though coverage varies widely across communities.
Previously, the government had cleared boosters of the Pfizer/BioNTech US-German pharmaceutical partnership’s vaccine, as well as the similar Moderna vaccine, only for vulnerable groups, including older Americans and people with chronic health problems.
The move to expand comes as new Covid-19 cases have climbed steadily over the last two weeks, especially in states where colder weather is driving people indoors.
Sparked by those worrying trends, some states didn’t wait for federal officials to act. Utah and Massachusetts were the latest states to announce in the past week that they were opening boosters to all adults.
Boosters for everyone was the Biden administration’s original goal. But in September, a panel of FDA advisers voted overwhelmingly against that idea based on the vaccines’ continued effectiveness in most age groups. Instead they endorsed an extra Pfizer dose only for the most vulnerable.
Since then, administration officials, including the chief medical adviser to the president, Anthony Fauci, have continued making the case for using boosters more widely, noting that even milder infections in younger people can cause long Covid and other complications.
“I don’t know of any other vaccine where we only worry about keeping people out of the hospital,” said Fauci at a briefing Wednesday.
Jessica Glenza contributed to this report
