WASHINGTON—Warning of tough days ahead with surging Covid-19 infections, the director of the National Institutes of Health said Sunday the US could decide in the next couple weeks whether to offer coronavirus booster shots to Americans this fall.
Among the first to receive them could be health-care workers, nursing home residents and other older Americans.
Dr. Francis Collins also pleaded anew for unvaccinated people to get their shots, calling them “sitting ducks” for a delta variant that is ravaging the country and showing little sign of letting up.
“This is going very steeply upward with no signs of having peaked out,” he said.
Federal health officials have been actively looking at whether extra shots for the vaccinated may be needed as early as this fall, reviewing case numbers in the US “almost daily” as well as the situation in other countries such as Israel, where preliminary studies suggest the vaccine’s protection against serious illness dropped among those vaccinated in January.
Israel has been offering a coronavirus booster to people over 60 who were already vaccinated more than five months ago.
No US decision has been made because cases here so far still indicate that people remain highly protected from Covid-19, including the Delta variant, after receiving the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna regimen or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
But US health officials made clear Sunday they are preparing for the possibility that the time for boosters may come sooner than later.
Moderna President Stephen Hoge said seeing some “breakthrough”
ion,” such as mask-wearing in schools and other public spaces.
“We’ve just got to realize that we’re dealing with a public health crisis,” he said. “The more you get infections, the more spread you get, the greater opportunity the virus has to continue to evolve and mutate.”
Collins spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” Fauci appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and Hoge was on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” (AP)