The case for vaccine booster access for all
In the ongoing global outbreak, waning immunity puts us at risk
Below is the comment I submitted to the CDC’s ACIP panel in support of making COVID vaccine boosters available every 6 months broadly, not just for specific risk groups. Public comment closes on 4/20/2023.
This is an update to the comments I submitted to the FDA in February 2023. As a physician-scientist, I continue to support a frequency of at least every 6 months for COVID-19 boosters for all people. The preponderance of all available evidence supports the fact that immunity wanes in the months following vaccination, and allowing boosters (all authorized vaccine types) at least every 6 months allows all of us who are at risk to maintain better protection than an annual booster strategy would allow. Particularly, I hope you will allow boosting with mRNA vaccines every 6 months, given the proven effectiveness of these vaccines (one recent comparative example https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.22.22283869v2).
All of us are vulnerable to COVID infection, and allowing boosters every 6 months will reduce barriers to high levels of protection for all of us, including individuals who are frequently exposed due to the lack of COVID mitigations in our schools and workplaces, the millions of Americans who already have Long COVID and are at risk of additional damage and disability due to reinfection, as well as traditional risk groups such as those who are immunocompromised, those at high risk of severe disease (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html), and the elderly.
Under the current FDA-proposed authorization groups, as a non-immunocompromised adult under the age of 65, I will not be eligible for another booster until next fall 2023, as I received my bivalent mRNA booster in fall 2022. Given the excellent benefits and exceedingly low risks of vaccination, as well as the significant societal risks of living through an ongoing airborne pandemic with repeated COVID exposure in daily life, it is a mistake to deny a second round of boosters to the broader population.
I am a member of the People’s CDC, and you can find more information and references supporting a 6-month booster frequency on the People’s CDC substack post:
References
Liu B, Stepien S, Qian J, Gidding H, Nicolopoulos K, Amin J, Cheng A, Macartney K. Comparative Effectiveness of Four COVID-19 Vaccines, BNT162b2 MRNA, MRNA-1273, ChAdOx1 NCov-19 and NVX-CoV2373 against SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.529 (Omicron) Infection. Epidemiology; 2022. doi:10.1101/2022.12.22.22283869 URL: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.22.22283869v2
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html
Thank you for submitting a comment
"Under the current FDA-proposed authorization groups, as a non-immunocompromised adult under the age of 65, I will not be eligible for another booster until next fall 2024, as I received my bivalent mRNA booster in fall 2023." *I think this should be Fall 2023 and Fall 2022 :)