A 16-year-old teenager is given a dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine.
Jack Guez | AFP | Getty Images
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday strongly recommended that older teenagers get a booster vaccination at least six months after completing their first two Covid-19 doses.
The CDC’s recommendation for 16- and 17-year-olds comes just hours after the Food and Drug Administration extended Pfizer and BioNTech’s third inclusion eligibility to older teenagers.
“Although we don’t have all the answers to the Omicron variant, initial data suggest that COVID-19 boosters help expand and strengthen protection against Omicron and other variants,” said CDC director Rochelle Walensky in a Explanation. “We know COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and I strongly recommend adolescents 16 and 17 years of age to get their booster vaccinations when they are at least 6 months after their first Pfizer series of vaccinations.”
Walensky’s OK will allow most high school students to get their third chance right away.
The CDC’s urgent recommendation and FDA emergency clearance come just a day after Pfizer and BioNTech released initial laboratory data suggesting booster vaccinations offer high levels of protection against the highly mutated omicron variant of the virus called Covid-19 caused.
The preliminary data found that omicron significantly reduced the protection offered by the initial two-dose series. Boosters, on the other hand, combat the variant at a level comparable to the 95% protection offered by the two-dose series against the original strain of the virus, the laboratory results showed.
“With people gathering around the house with family and friends on the holidays, we cannot do without all of the public health preventive measures we have taken during the pandemic,” Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a press release. “As both the Delta and Omicron variants continue to spread, vaccination remains the best protection against COVID-19.”
Regulators in the US were hesitant to approve vaccines for younger people than for older adults because of concerns about myocarditis, a rare inflammatory heart disease most common in young men and believed to be related to testosterone levels.
The FDA said Thursday that after evaluating more real-world data, it found that the benefits of the syringes outweigh the risks of myocarditis.
The most common symptoms reported by those who received a booster vaccination are pain, redness, and swelling at the injection site, as well as fatigue, muscle and joint pain, and chills, according to the FDA.
The health authorities in the USA are calling on all persons who are entitled to a booster vaccination in view of fears of a winter Covid increase driven by the Delta variant and the uncertainty about the future course of the pandemic due to Omicron.
The effectiveness of the first two-dose series of vaccinations declined prior to the introduction of Omicron. Science magazine published a study last month that found the effectiveness of Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine decreased from 86% between February and October to 43%.
The Vice President of Pfizer’s Clinical Vaccine Research Program, Dr. John Perez told a CDC advisory committee last month that the booster was 95% effective in preventing symptomatic infection in a clinical trial of 10,000 participants ages 16 and older.
