The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel overwhelmingly voted against the Biden administration’s plan to implement booster shots of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines for all Americans on Friday.
In a vote of 16 to two, after reviewing data from the United States, the U.K., and Israel, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee agreed that despite the Biden administration’s push to offer extra shots to people as young as 16 years old in the next few days, there was not enough evidence to support COVID-19 booster shots for every age group.
The panel, however, unanimously voted to give emergency approval to Pfizer booster shots “at least six months following the second dose among people ages 65 and older and those at high risk of occupational exposure and severe COVID-19,” Fox News reported.
The Biden administration previously planned to move forward with supplemental jabs for adults beginning as early as the White House’s Sept. 20 deadline, pending the FDA’s approval. This pressure from the Democrat president and his administration to offer “premature and unnecessary” consent to something that scientific data does not conclusively back up, reports indicated, caused strife within the regulatory agency and even pushed several high-profile FDA officials to resign.
Later, these officials publicly disagreed with the administration’s booster shot push by signing a letter opposing it.
“Current evidence does not, therefore, appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high,” the letter states. “Even if humoral immunity appears to wane, reductions in neutralising antibody titre do not necessarily predict reductions in vaccine efficacy over time, and reductions in vaccine efficacy against mild disease do not necessarily predict reductions in the (typically higher) efficacy against severe disease.”
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel is scheduled to meet next week to determine its course of recommendation for or against booster shots.
Source: The Federalist
