The US plans to reinforce the immunization of the elderly and health workers with a third dose

An ambulance driver disinfects the stretcher after the transfer of a covid patient to a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, this Friday.KAREN PULFER FOCHT / Reuters

The United States plans to re-vaccinate elderly living in nursing homes and health workers with a new dose expected this fall, while scientists still debate the relevance of the booster shot,

reported this Saturday

, citing sources. of the Joe Biden Administration. The timetable has not yet been established, but it is estimated that the campaign could start in October. The first beneficiaries, to which population belonging to vulnerable groups would be added, would receive an extra dose of the same vaccine that was previously administered to them.

This Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, in its English acronym; the federal health authority) recommended an additional dose to immunosuppressed people (cancer patients, transplants or HIV patients, among other cases) at least 28 days after completing the regimen, given that "[recipients] do not always generate adequate levels of protection after receiving a double prick from one of the two messenger RNA vaccines", that is, those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. On the 12th, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the third dose of Pfizer and Moderna for people with weakened immune systems. The US has a reserve of at least 100 million doses, which will facilitate complementary immunization.

The plans of the Democratic Administration will have to overcome practical obstacles, the first of them reaching the inflection point that the delta variant of the coronavirus, dominant in the country, has caused, with hospitals in states such as Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi overflowing with patients, most of them not vaccinated.

The fact that the case tracking and notification system is territorially disparate also complicates plans.

The average of new cases has exceeded 66% in the last 14 days, while deaths have shot up to 116% in the same period, according to data compiled by the newspaper.

As in many other countries, any debate about the booster dose is suspicious, since, according to officials cited by

, could be interpreted as an impairment of the effectiveness of the prescribed regimen, with the corresponding signal of distrust for the population, especially when vaccination denial is a very notable phenomenon in the United States. In addition, the fact of considering a third dose when many countries have not yet started their vaccination campaigns multiplies the risk of new variants that could jump to the US and circumvent the effectiveness of the vaccines distributed. The World Health Organization has proposed a moratorium on the booster dose until the end of September, to boost vaccination in the countries furthest behind. A request ignored by the European Union considering that there is no data to justify the advisability of a supplementary dose,Although countries like France and Germany have announced their intention to reinforce the vaccination of the elderly and other vulnerable groups next month.

The US health authorities closely follow the experience of Israel, which already administers additional doses to the population over 60 years of age and two days ago announced that those over 50 will soon also be beneficiaries, the newspaper recalls. For the moment, the United Kingdom remains on the lookout, although with plans to inoculate the third dose to the British over 50 years.