Health experts advising the U.S. government on vaccines expressed initial support for giving booster shots to people vaccinated against Covid-19, starting with healthcare workers, nursing-home residents and others immunized earliest.
Members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, on Monday indicated their agreement with the Biden administration’s plans to offer the extra doses. Yet they said the priority should remain increasing vaccinations of unvaccinated people, and that boosters shouldn’t distract or impede from doing that.
When giving boosters, some panel members added, the priority should be preventing severe disease in people at highest risk of becoming sick with Covid-19, as opposed to preventing infections.
“It would be important for us to focus our efforts on preventing severe disease because variants are going to continue to emerge over time and will evade our ability to prevent all infections,” said Grace Lee, ACIP’s chairwoman, who is a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at Stanford University.
The group said it intended to vote on formally recommending boosters after they are cleared by the Food and Drug Administration and would reconvene soon to discuss additional data about their efficacy.
