CDC recommends an additional dose of the vaccine for immunocompromised people

The Committee for Disease Control and Prevention recommends an additional dose of the vaccine for immunocompromised people

The CDC advisory committee voted Friday to recommend an additional dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for people with moderately or severely compromised immunity as the delta variant continues to drive up infection rates nationwide.

The unanimous recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Immunization Practices Advisory Committee comes after the FDA updated emergency use authorizations for Pfizer and Moderna to allow an additional vaccine dose for some immunocompromised individuals, including So for transplant recipients And some cancer patients. The FDA decision allows immunocompromised people age 12 or older who have received the Pfizer vaccine and people age 18 or older who have received the Moderna vaccine to receive an additional dose of the vaccine.

Officials said Friday that a Johnson & Johnson vaccine was not included in the update "due to insufficient data."

The country's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Thursday that people would likely need a booster dose of COVID-19 "for continuity of protection." However, he emphasized that health officials were still evaluating the available data.

"At this moment - except immunodeficiency ... we don't think that others, old or healthy, who are not immunocompromised need (an extra dose of the vaccine) at this moment," he said.

According to officials, immunocompromised people are more likely to become severely ill from COID-19 and pass the virus on to other people. The head of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walinsky, said Friday that the immunocompromised population in the United States is "too small" -- less than 3% of American adults.

"An additional dose could help increase protection for these individuals, which is especially important with the prevalence of delta variant," she said. "This measure is about ensuring that our most vulnerable, who may need an additional dose to boost their biological responses to vaccines, are better protected from COVID-19."

Since July 1, health officials have seen a 700% increase in the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases nationwide. Dr. Kathleen Dowling, a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID-19 response team, noted that hospitalizations and deaths have risen across the United States since early July.

"Emerging experimental and observational data in adults suggest that an additional COVID19 mRNA vaccine in immunocompromised persons enhances the antibody response and increases the proportion of those who respond to the COVID-19 vaccine," she said at the ACIP meeting on Friday. "About potential harms, in the small studies of an additional dose of the mRNA vaccine, no serious adverse events were observed."

She added that immunocompromised people "should continue to wear a mask, keep a distance of 6 feet from others and avoid crowds and poorly ventilated indoor spaces."

According to the recent data from (CDC), just over 50% of all Americans and 61% of all adults have been vaccinated, according to the most recent data available from (CDC).

According to Johns Hopkins University statistics, since the start of the pandemic, 36.3 million cases of COVID-19 have been identified nationwide, resulting in more than 619,000 deaths. According to Johns Hopkins, in the past 28 days, with the delta case rising worldwide, US officials recorded 2.3 million new cases and about 10,800 deaths.