Advisers boost booster shots if ...

... you over 65, a health care worker, face serious health risks or are immuno-compromised

No surprises in the Food and Drug Administration’s outside advisory committee recommendation on Friday. The 19-member panel voted against recommending a booster Covid-19 vaccine shot for everyone before agreeing it made sense for everyone over 65, those facing high risk of exposure at work (like health care workers), those who are obese or have other serious health conditions and people who with compromised immune systems to get a third shot six months after the initial series.

While the advisory committee’s vote only applied to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the policy will likely be extended to all vaccines now on the market. The FDA usually follows the recommendations of its advisory committees. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee will meet early next week to fine tune its guidelines.

There were two main objections to making booster shots immediately available to everyone, the position being pushed by the White House. First, there is little evidence to suggest younger people who are less at risk from contracting severe Covid would benefit from another shot. Second, making it available to everyone would reduce the vaccine’s availability in less developed countries that still haven’t received adequate supplies of vaccines.

I have a number of friends who’ve already run out to get their booster shots. All of them fall into one of the categories given the unanimous go-ahead by the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Committee.

As far as causing a run in vaccine supplies is concerned, only 16% of the population or 54 million people are over 65. The group’s overall vaccination rate is about 83% (84.5% for the 65-74 year olds and 79.8% for those over 75). It would only take about 50 million booster shots to cover this group.

The bigger run on vaccines will come if younger people begin getting their first shots. Only 49% of people between 16 and 24 have gotten shots; 54% of people between 25 and 39; 63% between 40 and 49; and 72% between 50 and 64. There’s more than 200 million people in these age groups, which means moving this group up to an average of 80% vaccinated will take approximately 80 million doses of the two-dose vaccine.

Helping less developed countries acquire adequate supplies of vaccines should be high on the Biden administration’s agenda. But the path to getting that done doesn’t lie in denying people here access to the plentiful supply that now exists in this country.

Rather, the administration should apply maximum pressure on Pfizer, Moderna and other manufacturers to transfer the technology to generic manufacturers so they can ramp production. The patent holders have already made tens of billions of dollars in profits from these new vaccines. They’ve been amply rewarded for the risk they took on to develop the vaccines.

The risk we face here at home emanates first and foremost from the 40% of the population that still hasn’t been vaccinated. But we also face the risk of another variant more transmissible than delta emerging from some other country. As long as we ignore the needs of the less developed world, we will remain in the grips of this pandemic.