Needs and challenges for COVID-19 boosters and other vaccines in the U.S.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which was immediately endorsed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for new booster shots created to combat the most recent and highly prevalent Omicron variants of COVID-19, specifically BA.4 and BA.5. Fortunately, these most recent and very highly prevalent variants, while more communicable, are less lethal.
In a commentary published in The American Journal of Medicine, researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine and collaborators, provide the most updated guidance to healthcare providers and urge how widespread vaccination with these boosters can now avoid the specter of future and more lethal variants becoming a reality.
The authors point out that, compared with influenza, the mortality rate from COVID-19 is about 30 times higher. Further, a positive COVID-19 patient is likely to transmit to about six people compared with one or two for influenza. Finally, the boosters will reduce the risk of dying and hospitalization by more than 90 percent.
According to the authors, vaccines to prevent common and serious infectious diseases have had a greater impact on improving human health than any other medical advance of the 20th century. Nonetheless, since 2019, the percentages of children in the U.S. vaccinated against common and serious childhood diseases has decreased.
