Biden administration to roll out booster shot campaigns. FDA yet to approve.

As the Biden administration is planning to launch a booster shot campaign as early as next week, the Food and Drug Administration has released a review of the COVID-19 booster shots from Pfizer on Wednesday. The review says that the booster shots definitely increased the immune responses in the recipients, but the need for booster shot is questioned since the company’s vaccine was still effective against most forms of the virus without the additional jab.

The FDA is planning to summon an expert committee to decide whether to approve the proposal for the booster shot or not. Amid the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus, it is found that all the three vaccines that are being used in the U.S. are still efficient and impart powerful protection against all forms of virus. Some studies show that the effectiveness of the vaccines declines to a certain limit, six months after the second dose. Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness falls from 96% to 84% after six months and the company claims that a third jab would reimpose the effectiveness to about 95%.

President Joe Biden had announced that the third shots of the vaccines would be offered to people, eight months from the second shot. The review findings that the vaccines are still extremely effective against severe cases even after declining in efficacy from 96% to 84% has made experts think about the necessity of administering a third shot. The New York Times observed that the FDA’s caveats could affect the implementation of the booster program by the White House.