CDC backs the rollout of COVID vaccine boosters from Moderna and J&J

 

NPR

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is backing the roll out of Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine boosters in line with the Food and Drug Administration's authorizations issued Wednesday. The CDC is also supporting a mix-and-match approach to booster vaccination.

CDC director Rochelle Walensky called the recommendations an "example of our fundamental commitment to protect as many people as possible from COVID-19."

The announcement came just hours after the CDC's vaccine advisory committee voted unanimously in favor of booster doses.

For Moderna, the panel said a booster should be given to people on the same terms as the Pfizer-BioNTech booster. That would cover people 65 and older, people 18 and older in long-term care settings and people 50 to 64 with relevant underlying medical conditions. The booster may be given to people 18 to 49 years with certain medical conditions and to people 18 to 64 who have COVID-19 risks related to their work or who live in certain institutional settings.

For Johnson & Johnson, the panel's advice was simpler: A booster is recommended for people 18 and older at least two months after their initial immunization.

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A CDC presentation and draft voting language said that the same vaccine used for initial immunization should be used as a booster dose but that a mix-and-match approach is OK when the primary vaccine isn't available or a different vaccine is preferred.

During the committee discussions, several members pushed back against this preference for boosting with the same vaccine. They argued that a more permissive approach to mix-and-match would ease the administration of booster doses.

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The FDA authorizes Moderna and J&J COVID vaccine boosters

After a brief break late in the deliberations, CDC staff returned with revised voting questions that were neutral on which vaccine should be used as a booster for the J&J and Moderna vaccines. The revised questions don't explicitly mention which vaccine should be used as a booster, which clears the way for mix-and-match boosting without restrictions.

According to the CDC, more than 189 million people in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, about 57% of the population. Hospitalization rates are nine to 15 times higher in unvaccinated adults compared with vaccinated adults, according to CDC data.

Still, there are reasons to think that boosters could be useful in some groups of people.

There has been a drop in Moderna's effectiveness against infection with the coronavirus over time and in the face of the delta variant. Protection against hospitalization has remained generally strong, though there have been some declines seen in older people.

For the J&J vaccine, the protection against infection and hospitalization has been pretty steady, the CDC pointed out. But the vaccine has been less effective overall than the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, so a booster can push protection from the J&J vaccine to a higher level.

The committee wrestled with the trade-off in risks and benefits for boosters in some groups. People 65 and older have the most to gain and relatively little increased risk. For the Moderna vaccine, protection has remained pretty strong for younger people, and their risks for heart inflammation are higher, especially in males.

For the J&J vaccine, there were concerns about rare blood clots following vaccination, which are a higher risk for younger women. But there are benefits from a booster overall because of increased protection from the second dose.

Unvaccinated Americans say COVID vaccines are riskier than the virus, even as Delta surges among them

Andrew Romano

·West Coast Correspondent

Tue, July 20, 2021, 5:00 AM

YAHOO NEWS

When asked which poses a greater risk to their health, more unvaccinated Americans say the COVID-19 vaccines than say the virus itself, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll — a view that contradicts all available science and data and underscores the challenges that the United States will continue to face as it struggles to stop a growing “pandemic of the unvaccinated” driven by the hyper-contagious Delta variant.

The survey of 1,715 U.S. adults, which was conducted from July 13 to 15, found that just 29 percent of unvaccinated Americans believe the virus poses a greater risk to their health than the vaccines — significantly less than the number who believe the vaccines represent the greater health risk (37 percent) or say they’re not sure (34 percent).

Over the last 18 months, COVID-19 has killed more than 4.1 million people worldwide, including more than 600,000 in the U.S. At the same time, more than 2 billion people worldwide — and more than 186 million Americans — have been at least partially vaccinated against the virus, and scientists who study data on their reported side effects continue to find that the vaccines are extraordinarily safe.

A supporter of President Donald Trump on Jan. 5 holds an anti-vaccine sign at a protest at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. (Erin Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Yet 93 percent of unvaccinated U.S. adults — the equivalent of 76 million people — say they will either “never” get vaccinated (51 percent); that they will keep waiting “to see what happens to others before deciding” (20 percent); or that they’re not sure (22 percent).

With Delta rapidly becoming dominant nationwide, U.S. COVID-19 cases have surged by 140 percent over the last two weeks. Hospitalizations and deaths — both lagging indicators — are up by one-third over the same period. Missouri, Arkansas, Nevada and Florida are being hit particularly hard, with hospitalization rates soaring to 2-3 times the national average. Nearly all of the Americans who are falling ill, getting hospitalized and dying — 99 percent, according to some estimates — are unvaccinated. And more than half the U.S. population (52 percent) has yet to be fully inoculated.

As the Delta variant surges among the unvaccinated and counties such as Los Angeles reinstitute indoor mask mandates to try to stave it off, Yahoo News and YouGov sought to understand why so many Americans continue to hold off on vaccination — and whether Delta’s rise might change any minds.

The results are complicated. Some unvaccinated Americans recognize the rising threat of Delta. The share who say they are worried about the variant has risen 9 percentage points (from 25 percent to 34 percent) since last month. Yet the share of unvaccinated Americans who say they are not worried about Delta is larger, and it has risen by nearly as much (from 31 percent to 39 percent).

As such, just half of the unvaccinated say Delta poses “a serious risk” to “all Americans” (33 percent) or “unvaccinated Americans” (17 percent); the other half says the variant doesn’t pose a serious risk to anyone (30 percent) or that they’re not sure (20 percent). In contrast, a full 85 percent of vaccinated Americans — and 72 percent of all Americans — say Delta poses a serious risk.

Yet while unvaccinated Americans are relatively dismissive of Delta’s dangers — which have been amply proven by massive outbreaks in India and elsewhere — they tend to apply a much lower bar to the COVID vaccines. Asked to pick the “most important reason” they haven’t been vaccinated, for example, few say they lack “easy access to vaccination” (4 percent), “can’t get time off from work” (3 percent), or “already had COVID” (9 percent). More say they’re not worried about getting COVID (12 percent) or — far more frequently — that they don’t trust the COVID vaccines (45 percent).

Anti-vaccine protesters gather at Indiana University's Sample Gates during a demonstration. (Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

But why? The most important reason, according to 37 percent of unvaccinated Americans, is that they’re “concerned about long-term side effects.” That’s followed by “I don’t trust the government” (17 percent), “The vaccines are too new” (16 percent), “The FDA hasn’t fully approved the vaccines yet” (11 percent) and “I don’t trust any vaccines” (6 percent).

The trouble for public health officials is twofold. First, despite the fact that there’s no precedent in the history of vaccines for severe side effects emerging several months after dosage, let alone several years — and no mechanism by which the COVID vaccines would trigger such side effects — it’s difficult to convince skeptics that this time won’t be different. Meanwhile, the pandemic is ongoing and the clock is ticking.

Second, when unvaccinated skeptics are asked to select “all” the reasons they don’t trust the COVID vaccines — as opposed to just the “most important” — many select all of them. Seventy percent say they’re concerned about long-term side effects; 60 percent say the vaccines are too new; 55 percent say they don’t trust the government; 50 percent say they’re concerned about short-term side effects; 45 percent say the FDA hasn’t fully approved the vaccines yet; 45 percent say they don’t trust drug companies; and 26 percent say they don’t trust any vaccines. Hesitancy, in other words, could turn into a game of whack-a-mole: address one concern and another just pops up to replace it.

Whether Delta’s impact softens any of this resistance remains to be seen. Fifteen percent of unvaccinated Americans say the spread of Delta makes them more likely to get vaccinated, particularly Democrats (34 percent) and Latinos (34 percent). Yet another 12 percent of unvaccinated Americans actually say Delta makes them less likely to get a shot, and 73 percent say it makes “no difference.”

Delving deeper, 20 percent of unvaccinated Americans say they would be “much more” (10 percent) or “somewhat more” (10 percent) likely to get vaccinated “if COVID cases start to rise among unvaccinated people in [their] area”; the same goes for rising local hospitalizations and deaths. Likewise, 27 percent of unvaccinated Americans say they’d be either much more (12 percent) or somewhat more (15 percent) likely to get vaccinated when the FDA fully approves the COVID vaccines, which are currently authorized for emergency use to combat the pandemic.

Full FDA approval isn’t expected until next year. COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths, on the other hand, are already rising. We’ll see if either makes a difference.

_________________________

The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,715 U.S. adults interviewed online from July 13 to 15, 2021. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as well as 2020 presidential vote (or non-vote), and voter registration status. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.7 percent.

The White House Says It Has Started Shipping Surplus COVID-19 Vaccines Abroad

 NPR

Heard on All Things Considered

TAMARA KEITH

MARK KATKOV

People wait to receive COVID-19 vaccine in Chennai, India

Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images

The United States will send its first shipments of surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses abroad on Thursday, spelling out for the first time how it will share its wealth of vaccines with parts of the world struggling to get shots in arms.

The Biden administration has previously said it would share 80 million doses by the end of June. "We know that won't be sufficient," said Jeff Zients, coordinator of the White House COVID-19 response. But he said it's an important step toward boosting global production and trying to end the global pandemic.

"We expect a regular cadence of shipments around the world across the next several weeks. And in the weeks ahead, working with the world's democracies we will coordinate a multilateral effort, including the G-7, to combat and end the pandemic," Zients said.

The U.S. has contracts for hundreds of millions more vaccine doses than it could possibly use — and this is a major move by the Biden administration to attempt to exert global leadership after months of pressure from global health organizations.

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Zients said 75% of the first 25 million doses will be allotted through COVAX, an international distribution system aimed at helping vaccinate people in the world's poorest countries.

The administration also removed contract ratings under the Defense Production Act that prioritized U.S. contracts for suppliers to AstraZeneca, Novavax and Sanofi — three vaccines not currently authorized for use in the United States.

"While the manufacturers will continue to make these three vaccines, this action will allow U.S.-based companies that supply these vaccine manufacturers to make their own decisions on which orders to fulfill first," Zients said.

The administration says no strings attached

The first priority for doses shared through COVAX will be Latin America and the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, the White House said.

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The remaining doses will go to countries that have made their case to the White House, including nations such as India that have seen surges in cases; places such as Gaza, which is grappling to rebuild from recent fighting; and neighboring countries such as Canada and Mexico, the White House said.

"This won't be enough to end or reduce the life span of the pandemic. And that's why we're working with allies and partners to expand the production of vaccines and raw materials, including here at home," said Jake Sullivan, President Biden's national security adviser, on a call with reporters.

Sullivan emphasized there would be no strings attached to the doses — a veiled criticism of China and Russia, which have rapidly shared doses around the world. "We're not seeking to extract concessions. We're not extorting. We're not imposing conditions the way that other countries who are providing doses are doing."

In accordance with the administration's framework, the White House announced approximate allocations for the first 25 million doses that will ship:

• 6 million to South and Central America;
• 7 million to Asia;
• 5 million to Africa; and
• 6 million to Mexico, Canada, South Korea, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, Ukraine, Kosovo, Haiti, Georgia, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Yemen as well as U.N. front-line workers

Leaders are facing calls to do more

Both Biden and Vice President Harris leave next week on their first official foreign trips and are expected to discuss the U.S. plans for vaccine distribution. Harris is set to travel to Guatemala and Mexico City starting on Sunday, and Biden leaves Wednesday for the U.K., Brussels and Geneva.

Harris made a series of calls about the shipments on Thursday, including to leaders in Mexico, Guatemala and India. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tweeted about his conversation with Harris, announcing that a shipment of 1 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines would be heading for Mexico. The White House did not immediately confirm those details.

Carolyn Reynolds of the Pandemic Action Network called the announcement a good start but said the White House and other world leaders needed to pick up the pace.

"It is time to have a global road map to vaccinate the world. That's what we hope will come out of the G-7 summit next week," Reynolds told NPR. "As long as this pandemic is raging anywhere around the world, Americans aren't safe, none of us are safe."

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Tom Hart, acting CEO of the ONE Campaign, said he was disappointed that the Biden administration has not moved faster to ship 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which U.S. regulators have not yet authorized for emergency use.

"Less than 1 percent of COVID-19 vaccine doses globally have been administered to people in low-income countries," Hart said in a statement. "This is a once in a generation crisis, and as we approach the G7 next week, the world is looking to the US for global leadership and more ambition is needed."

CDC says vaccinated people can mostly go without masks outdoors

 

Susan Walsh-Pool/Getty Images

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday announced loosened mask guidelines for outdoor settings. These rollbacks will be especially pronounced for fully vaccinated people, who can now dine at outdoor restaurants with friends without any precautions and attend crowded events such as concerts and sports games provided they are wearing masks. [NBC News / Erika Edwards] Unvaccinated people are now allowed to attend outdoor gatherings with fully vaccinated peers and go on outdoor walks with members of a household without masks. But the CDC is still discouraging vaccinated people from dining indoors at restaurants without masks. [Washingtonian / Jessica Sidman] Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said that the new guidelines underscore the benefits of vaccinations, which are now being offered to all adults in the country. “The message is clear,” Becerra said. “You’re vaccinated? Guess what, you get to return to a more normal lifestyle.” [CBS News] With each day, more Americans join the ranks of those who can benefit from the updated CDC guidelines. 54 percent of US adults have received at least one Covid-19 shot. Almost 40 percent of adults, and over two-thirds of all seniors, are now fully vaccinated. [CDC]