Maria Cramer and Jenny Gross
07/30/2021 1:38 PM
Clarín.com
The New York Times International Weekly
Updated 07/30/2021 1:38 PM
Many scientists claim that vaccinated people probably won't need booster shots any time soon.
However,
some are wearing them.
They go to local pharmacies, other states, or even other countries - anywhere they are not known to have been vaccinated - for
additional doses
because of their concern about the
delta variant
or because they are concerned that their protection is disappearing .
Thursday's news that
Israel will
administer them to some elderly people appears to stimulate this trend.
Ida Thompson was vaccinated for the third time in Cape Coral, Florida, after receiving the first two in Edinburgh, where she lives.
Photo Emily Macinnes / The New York Times.
"You never have enough
, that's my feeling," said Ida Thompson, a retired geology professor who got vaccinated with
Pfizer
a few weeks ago in the United States, months after receiving two doses of the
AstraZeneca
vaccine
in Britain.
"Come".
Thompson, who has six grandchildren, said her decision to get vaccinated came on the spur of the moment.
While taking a coronavirus test at a Florida pharmacy, where he was visiting family, he saw that the pharmacy was offering vaccines.
When a pharmacy employee asked him if it was his first or second vaccination, he said it was the first.
"As it was my first Pfizer," Thompson said.
"It was pretty clear to me that
AZ plus Pfizer
was a good idea," he added, after reading about a study on the benefits of mixing AstraZeneca and Pfizer.
Does a gusset provide additional protection?
-Maybe, but it's too early to say, at least according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC has not licensed booster shots, but there is a growing consensus in the Biden government that people over 65 or with compromised immune systems
would benefit
from a third vaccine.
Pfizer and BioNTech, the company that invented the vaccine and partnered with Pfizer to develop it, have reported that a third injection of their vaccine
raises levels of antibodies
in the blood against various versions of the coronavirus, including the highly contagious delta variant.
And some research suggests that mixing different types of vaccines may elicit a stronger immune response than just one brand.
Israel went ahead on Thursday, with Prime Minister
Naftali Bennett
's announcement that healthcare providers would begin administering Pfizer's third vaccine to people 60 and older, starting Sunday.
They will have to have received the second dose
more than five months ago
to be eligible for it.
But some researchers and public health officials have cautioned that much of this data is preliminary, and that people should not assume that boosters are necessary.
Two shots of the Pfizer or
Moderna
vaccines
offer strong, long-lasting protection against serious illness and death.
Johnson & Johnson
said the company's data shows the vaccine was 85% effective against severe
delta variant
disease
and protected those who received it from hospitalization and death.
Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease specialist and associate professor of medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, said that many of her patients who received the Johnson &;;
Johnson have asked if they should receive an additional injection.
This vaccine, like AstraZeneca's, is
less effective
than mRNA vaccines.
It's not unreasonable for those patients to consider it, he tells them.
But Kuppalli says he explains to his patients that the data remains murky regarding possible side effects, and that the research is not yet final.
"Actually, we want science to guide our policies," he said.
Terri Givens, a professor at Quebec's McGill University who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in March, said she was thinking of a
booster
but didn't want to get ahead of the investigation.
"I don't want to do it because it can work," said Givens, 56, who teaches political science.
"I want to do it
thoroughly,
when my doctor says it's okay."
Given the decentralized vaccine reserve system in the United States, several people said it was easy to get a booster, even if
it was not technically allowed.
Regulations
In its emergency clearances for the vaccines, the Food and Drug Administration allowed only two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Before the CDC could recommend boosters, the FDA would have to change this authorization or fully approve the vaccines.
If fully approved, physicians would have more leeway to prescribe a booster for their patients.
In statements, the
Walgreens and CVS
pharmacies
,
which have inoculated hundreds of thousands of Americans, said they did not offer booster shots.
Trevor Achilles, a 27-year-old who is vulnerable to COVID-19 because he received a
kidney transplant,
said he had a hard time getting an appointment at CVS for his third vaccine, even after his doctor recommended one in addition to the two doses. from Pfizer that I had already received.
Finally, on Thursday he was able to make an appointment at a local pharmacy in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he lives, to receive the Moderna vaccine.
"I'm very excited," said Achilles, a dishwasher.
"I am incredibly vulnerable and I don't want to take any chances when it comes to the delta."
- And ethics?
-Enter a gray area, according to experts.
Ideally, the leftover vaccines in rich countries would go to countries with fewer stocks, rather than to people who want extra doses, Kuppalli said.
"Before we start talking about people getting a third dose of the vaccine, we have to make sure that
everyone
can get a dose of it," he said.
Erin Matson, who was vaccinated with Moderna on Sunday after getting a dose of the Johnson &; vaccine;
Johnson said he was concerned that he might be taking a dose
from someone
who has not yet been vaccinated.
But given that many unused vaccines are thrown away, and vaccines are doubted in the United States, he said he thought that was unlikely.
"I'm not taking it away from someone who wouldn't have been vaccinated otherwise," said Matson, 41, who lives in the Washington, DC area.
"I'm taking it from a garbage can."
Matson, director of a nonprofit organization, said she was concerned about contracting the highly communicable delta variant and infecting her 8-year-old daughter.
She got the booster shot at a pharmacy where, to her relief,
no one asked her
if she had already been vaccinated.
Maureen Kelley, a member of the
World Health Organization's
ethics committee for
COVID-19 research, said that at the policy level, the approach of governments in high-income countries on giving booster vaccines was shameful. when only
1.1% of people
in the poorest countries have received at least one dose.
He claimed that anyone receiving a booster dose is contributing to
ignorance
about vaccine inequalities.
"If I make the decision to go for a booster, I think I am complicit in the decisions of my government or the pharmaceutical companies," said Kelley, a professor of bioethics in the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford.
"I don't think we can easily separate individual decisions from these kinds of more political decisions."
Another bioethicist, Hon-Lam Li, deputy director of the bioethics center at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said he saw a more important question:
It could be said that it is unethical to avoid vaccination, because that endangers the lives of others.
He said he saw no ethical issues in cases where patients were vulnerable or where doctors recommended a booster.
And what about the fourth vaccine?
Thompson, the retired geologist from Edinburgh, said she would consider it when she returns to Florida in a few months.
"If I thought that would further improve my immunity," he said, "it certainly would."
c.2021 The New York Times Company
Look also
Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox
Sputnik V, "stranded": it has been without approval in Europe for five months and the WHO does not authorize it