“Staying up-to-date on vaccines means getting a booster” -CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -CDC have changed their recommendations for vaccinated Americans, urging staying “up to date” on one’s COVID-19 shots means getting a booster shot.
“CDC surveillance data and other studies from around the world have demonstrated the benefit of a booster dose after receiving only a primary series, including decreased risk of infection, severe disease and death,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky said at a White House news briefing yesterday.
CDC recommends people who received a primary shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should get a booster of either the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccine at least two months after receiving their J&J shot.
More than 71 million Americans have received a booster dose, according to CDC data.
However, health officials also said on Wednesday that they are not changing the qualifications for being “fully vaccinated” against COVID-19.
The decision to keep the initial definition, established more than a year ago when the vaccines first rolled out, means that federal vaccination mandates for travel or employment won’t require a booster dose.
Maintaining the existing definition of “fully vaccinated” could make it more difficult to encourage some Americans who only begrudgingly got their primary doses of the vaccine to get boosted, since they would not face onerous restrictions often imposed on the unvaccinated — including testing requirements or, in some jurisdictions, being barred from indoor dining and other facilities.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s top science adviser on the COVID-19 response, said earlier this week that the administration was shifting how it talked about vaccinations and getting booster doses.
“We’re using the terminology now ‘keeping your vaccinations up to date,’ rather than what ‘fully vaccinated’ means,” he said during a National Institutes of Health lecture.
Okwuego/USA Today
