While some Americans remain hesitant — and even outright opposed — to getting a coronavirus vaccine, others have found ways to get a COVID-19 vaccine booster ahead of U.S. health authorities’ recommendations.
In a joint statement in early July, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said fully vaccine Americans “do not need a booster shot at this time.” But this hasn’t stopped people, including those with compromised immune systems who are more susceptible to life-threatening complications from the coronavirus, from finding access to a booster shot, The Washington Post reported.
- Dr. Camille Kotton, a clinical director at Massachusetts General Hospital’s infection disease division who also sits on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, has said that “many patients have ‘taken matters into their own hands and many are proceeding with additional doses of vaccine as they see fit,’” reported The Post.
- Kotton said she is worried about patients getting boosters without supervision and that health care professionals’ “hands are really tied with the current regulatory situation.”
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Those worried about the lasting efficacy of their first round of COVID-19 vaccine are getting an additional booster shot through a couple means, STAT News — a health care and science news platform — reported.
- Although U.S. health care officials have said a booster isn’t needed right now, “some anxious patients are nonetheless trying to get them — either by asking a health care provider willing to prescribe an extra shot, or by lying about their earlier vaccination,” reported STAT News.
- “People are frightened, and they are not sure what to do,” said Rebecca Coyle, American Immunization Registry Association executive director, according to STAT News. “There are so many reasons why someone would be motivated to seek an additional shot and it’s hard to catch all of those, so registries can be leveraged to ask questions.”
WHO asks for moratorium on booster shots
Anxiety on whether or not to seek a booster — even without federal guidance or complete FDA approval of the vaccines — comes while the highly contagious delta variant causes a surge in cases in the U.S. and as some European countries and Israel have began to make and implement national booster plans, according to The New York Times.
Those plans have led World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to ask countries to hold off on administering COVID-19 booster shots and help countries with low incomes with vaccine supply shortages.
- “I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected,” Tedros said in a statement that was shared by the WHO on Twitter Wednesday.
- “Accordingly, WHO is calling for a moratorium on boosters until at least the end of September, to enable at least 10% of the population of every country to be vaccinated,” Tedros added.