For foreign journalists: the latest information about COVID-19 booster shots
As the world is entering a new phase of pandemic, journalists and news outlets covering COVID-19 developments face a new flow of information about the coronavirus booster shots in the US.
FOREIGN PRESS has compiled the following information for foreign journalists to help them gain a broader understanding of the latest developments on this issue in their reporting:
Vaccines' effectiveness against COVID is declining with time, according to new data.
The Biden administration has made it clear that all Americans will be able to get vaccine boosters against the virus starting Sept. 20.
According to scientists and officials, booster vaccines cannot be given earlier than eight months after the second vaccine shot for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. Further data will need to be weighed in regarding Johnson and Johnson vaccines.
U.S. health officials attributed the need for a third booster dose to the widespread presence of the more threatening Delta variant as well as to the loss of immunity provided by COVID vaccines after some time. Officials have also determined booster shots won't be distributed to the public without approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
If the official US authorities give their approval, booster shots will be available for all Americans, with groups of people at an increased risk of infection, like healthcare workers will be first in line for a booster shot.
US health officials' top priority is to prevent people infected with COVID from hospitalization or even death. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a White House medical adviser, the boosters will significantly increase Americans' protection against COVID and its Delta variant.
In studies that examined vaccine protection against Coronaviruses and the Delta variant, vaccine effectiveness fell from 92% to 80%. However, vaccine protection against COVID remains strong enough to avert a spike in hospitalization rates.
In Germany and France, booster shots will be offered to categories of the population at a higher risk for COVID and its Delta variant, while Israel has already begun offering a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to people over 60.
Vaccine boosters are the subject of much controversy. Concerns over the spread of the virus and social-economic questions are at the center of the controversy. The World Health Organization (WHO) advised governments with developed economies to postpone booster shots because impoverished countries around the world cannot make the vaccine accessible to individuals in high-risk categories. The WHO estimates that over 80% of vaccine doses have been distributed to countries with wealthier economies.
At the same time, more than half of the world's population does not have widespread access to vaccines. Additionally, WHO executives warned that new life-threatening variants are likely to emerge if large portions of the world's population are still unvaccinated due to an unbalanced global distribution of vaccines between developed and undeveloped economies.
Those foreign journalists who cover COVID-19 developments in their stories are advised to rely on official institutional and organization sources for their information and reporting, primarily from:
