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On Wednesday, U. S. officials officially announced their goal of offering COVID-19 vaccine boosters to Americans, and plans are already under the microscope of World Health Organization experts.
The U. S. government U. S. He proposed that all Americans vaccinated with two doses of an mRNA vaccine (modern or Pfizer/BioNTech) get a third booster dose of the same vaccine 8 months after receiving their dose for the time being. order in which vaccines were presented first to people, i. e. frontline fitness workers, nursing home citizens and other frontline seniors.
The U. S. government U. S. It is able to begin providing booster injections the week of September 20; however, the withdrawal schedule is pending approval by the Food and Drug Administration and advice from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an independent expert committee that advises the Centers for Disaster Control and Prevention.
Like the initial doses, booster doses will be released for all Americans, without the need for identity or fitness insurance. The federal government will distribute enough doses to each and every American to obtain a booster, which will be administered at approximately 80,000 management sites. nationwide, adding local pharmacies.
So far, nearly two hundred million Americans have gained at least one dose of a vaccine and nearly 170 million are fully vaccinated. These numbers come with the nearly 14 million Americans who won Johnson’s single-shot vaccine.
Officials are waiting for those who won the Johnson vaccine.
The Biden administration’s resolution to offer reinforcements was revealed to the press in advance and reported Monday night. The third doses have been painstakingly crafted to withstand the criticism, which is already coming.
A few hours earlier, on Wednesday, the World Health Organization held its own press conference. Its experts have spared no words about why they believe implementing reinforcement is a bad idea.
“The truth right now is, today, if we think about this in terms of analogy, we plan to distribute more life jackets to other people who already have life jackets while leaving others to drown without a single life. This is the truth,” Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, told the briefing. “Science is not sure about the [drivers],” he added. “Obviously, there’s more knowledge to collect. But the basic moral truth is [that] we distribute life jackets leaving millions and millions of people with nothing to protect them. “
Who’s acute complaint about the U. S. planU. S. Not surprisingly, earlier this month, the UN firm called for a moratorium on booster injections until at least the end of September, which would give at least 10% more time to verify and vaccinate at least 10% of everyone. In the announcement, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that high-income countries administered one hundred doses in a similar way to another hundred people, while low-income countries administered only 1. 5 doses in a manner consistent with a hundred other people who were required to inequit their supplies.
But the argument for the equivalent distribution of vaccines around the world is not just moral; It is also in the most productive interests of global public health. While the coronavirus pandemic will spread freely among other unauthorized people anywhere, it will have new opportunities for each inflamed user to mutate and generate more variants.
Currently, U. S. officials are focusing on the delta variant, which was first known in India and is more than twice as contagious as the original strain of the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Delta can also escape some of the immune system’s defenses. cutting the effectiveness of vaccines. And there is also knowledge that suggests that it causes more serious diseases in inflamed people.
Still, delta is probably not the worst variant we find. There are many opportunities for the emergence of new variants of SARS-CoV-2. Health experts are involved in so-called “escape” variants that can escape all immune responses. making our current generation of vaccines ineffective. CDC has a special designation for such a variant, called a “high-result variant,” or VOHC. To date, no VOHC has been identified from SARS-CoV-2. (Delta is a VOC or a worrying variant. )
“We’re talking about everyone in high-income countries getting a booster,” said Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist. “It’s a situation, and I’m afraid it’s just leading to more variants, more escape variants, and maybe we’re heading into more disastrous situations. “
Who’s senior adviser, Dr Bruce Aylward, echoed this point: “What makes the most sense is to receive at least two doses in the uncon vaccinated before having more doses in the well-vaccinated. “sum game’, he said.
In their defense of the launch, U. S. officials noted that the country had already donated more doses than any other country in the world.
“We have already shipped more than 115 million doses of vaccines to 80 other countries, more doses of vaccines administered than any other country in the world,” Jeff Zients, white house COVID-19 reactions coordinator, said at today’s news conference. In response to the who experts’ complaint, Zients added that the United States had also begun shipping the one billion doses of the Pfizer vaccine it had pledged to purchase and donate to one hundred low- and lower-middle-income countries.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy went on, opposing the concept of a zero-sum game. “I’m not satisfied with the concept that we have to decide between the United States and the world. Obviously, we see our duty to any Array. We want to do everything we can for other people here at home as we detect that repression [pandemic] around the world and vaccinate other people will be the key to preventing the long-term increase in variants. We know. We can see that obviously. We think we want to paint on both fronts, as we have.
U. S. officials also used the clinical knowledge briefing on which they relied to publish the recall call. WHO experts have continually pointed out in their reviews that knowledge about the need for reinforcements is not yet certain, and U. S. officials have not necessarily questioned this.
The resolution to implement 8-month boosters for Americans was based on the trajectory of trends and clinical judgment rather than on false evidence of vaccine failure. In fact, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci noted that, to date, vaccines continue to work. Offer relatively high degrees of coverage against serious illness, hospitalization and death.
But, unsurprisingly, the levels of antibodies opposed to SARS-CoV-2 are decreasing in vaccinated people. While antibodies are not the best indicator of overall coverage (other cellular immune responses also offer coverage), antibodies are related to overall coverage grades, Dr. . Fauci pointed out in a slideshow. In addition, new knowledge recommends that coverage against asymptomatic and symptomatic infections decreases with antibodies. And this decrease is independent of the fact that vaccines are also less effective versus the delta variant compared to previous variants. In addition to the troubling trends, knowledge from Pfizer/BioNTech and Modern shows that a third dose of vaccine can accumulate antibody levels more than ten times.
Together, officials hope the vaccines will be ineffective and have called for reinforcements before that happens.
“This has been an almost reproducible phenomenon with COVID-19: if you wait for something bad to happen before responding to itArray. . . you’re significantly programmed,” Fauci said. If you take a look at the indications we’ve had. . . you don’t need to be late, catching up. It is better to stand in front of him than to run after him.
As for why officials chose the eight-month mark for withdrawals, Murthy noted that it’s just a trial. “There’s nothing magical about this issue [eight months],” he said. “Could it have been a week before, a week later?That’s where the judgment comes in, and that’s why we’ve devoted so much time and thought to this decision. “
But for now, Murthy has tried to reassure Americans that existing vaccine coverage remains strong. “What we said before, what’s still true today, is that we don’t think the general population wants booster vaccines today,” he said. true yesterday. That was true five days ago. That was true a few weeks ago. We are pronouncing a plan for the future. “
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