The Advisers Committee of the US Drug and Food Administration (FDA) recommended this Friday the application of a reinforcement dose of the Pfizer vaccine against the COVID-19 for those over 65 and the high population Risk of the vaccine.
The approval was held in a second vote after previously rejected, with extensive support, the plan of a third dose for the majority of the population, when considering the tests to administer a third dose to the whole world.
In this way, the request of Pfizer is restricted, which had requested approval for people over 16 years of this reinforcement, six months after the second dose.
During the discussion of more than eight hours, with interventions of dozens of scientists from the United States and other countries, especially Israel and the United Kingdom, doubts were patent in the international community about the safety and relevance of the reinforcement vaccine for the over 16 years old.
In this regard, Dr. Paul Offit criticized the hurry shown by the Government of US President, Joe Biden, and the pharmacist to achieve this general authorization.
"This is a great decision (...) I do not understand what is the reason why we can not devote more time to look at the data," said Offit, from the Vaccine Education Center of Children's Hospital in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) during the debate.
For its part, Michael Kurilla, specialist in infectious diseases of the US National Institutes (NIH, in English) remarked that "it is not clear that everyone needs reinforcement, beyond the small population group that would clearly be at high risk of a serious illness. "
The vote of the FDA Advisors Panel is not binding but is usually respected by the Agency when issuing its decisions.
The recommendation is a touch of attention for the Biden Government, which had given its explicit support to the proposal and begun to make plans to start the administration of this third dose over 16 years of age with the view on September 20 .
Among the reinforcement support arguments, Pfizer's experts cited the rebound of cases by the delta, especially contagious variant, and the growing evidence that vaccine protection begins to decrease over time.
The final approval will be decided next week the Disease Control and Prevention Centers (CDC, in English).
Precisely Friday, a new CDC report was known that indicated that the modern vaccine is the most effective to avoid hospitalization by the COVID-19, followed by that of Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson's monodose.
Specifically, he noted that modern effectiveness is 93%, the Pfizer / Biontech is 88% and Johnson & Johnson is 71%.
According to the researchers, the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine begins to decrease more pronounced more pronounced than that of modern with the passage of time: from the fourth month of having been administered its second dose is 77%.
Pfizer's is the only vaccine that has total approval for use by the FDA, since those of Modern and Johnson & Johnson have emergency authorization.
Currently, 63.5% of the US population over 12 years old is vaccinated with the double pattern, and the pace of inoculation has slowed down in recent months, which has raised the concern among health authorities.
In recent weeks, USA registers an average of around 150,000 daily contagues and about 1,500 deaths, no view of the beginning of the year.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has been against this reinforcement dose and has requested a moratorium on countries seeking to administer it.
"We understand the concern of governments to protect their populations from the delta variant, but we can not accept that countries who have already used the most vaccine supplies, use even more, while the most vulnerable populations in the world remain without Protection, "said the Director General of the WHO, Tedros ADHANOM GHEBRAYESUS, last month.cia.
Date Of Update: 21 September 2021, 03:05
