The Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccine boosters for all adults, signing off on one simple message to encourage everyone to get their shots.
Per The Washington Post, the FDA approved boosters for people 18 years and older who are six months removed from their second COVID-19 shot.
- “The move reflects an urgent effort to spur the uptake of boosters to counter waning vaccine protection heading into the winter holiday season when millions of people travel to see friends and family,” per The Washington Post.
The announcement comes as states across the country have opened up vaccine booster shots for all adults. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday that all adults in Utah can get the vaccine booster shot.
- Cox said Utah wants to make the booster vaccine process simple to help make people “as safe as possible.”
Indeed, experts said the government has done a poor job with its messaging over the coronavirus vaccine booster shot, confusing people about when and if they should get a shot, as I wrote for the Deseret News.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has pushed for people to get their COVID-19 booster shots to avoid severe COVID-19 since more fully vaccinated people are getting infected right now, according to The Guardian.
- “To me, if you want to get to endemic, you have got to get the level of infection so low that it does not have an impact on society, on your life, on your economy,” Fauci said.
- “People will still get infected. People might still get hospitalized, but the level would be so low that we don’t think about it all the time and it doesn’t influence what we do.”