An advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration overwhelming voted against recommending coronavirus vaccine booster shots for adults 16 years old and older, citing concerns about the safety of the booster in younger people, NBC News reports.
The ruling puts the FDA determination in a direct path of White House recommendations that adults get the booster as a way of strengthening people’s resistance to new coronavirus variants as the highly-volatile winter season, when infections are expected to spike, approaches.
The issue seems to revolve around the amount of available information about the safety of a booster shot in people younger than 19 years old, a similar concern for some of the panel members when the vaccines were first approved. Those concerns were abated as more clinical data became available. The panel will discuss and vote upon recommendations for others to receive boosters later in Friday afternoon’s session.
The White House announced earlier this month that it was preparing to start offering booster shots September 20th to all people who received the initial vaccines eight months or more prior. That pushed the FDA panel to have to take up the question this week.
After the deliberations of the FDA panel are complete, their decisions will be sent to an advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who will make an independent determination on the safety of the policy.
“We’re being asked to approve this as a three-dose vaccine for people 16 years of age and older, without any clear evidence if the third dose for a younger person when compared to an elderly person is of value,” said committee member Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Several foreign countries, including Germany, the Czech Republic and Israel, are offering booster shots to people as young as 12 years old. American standards, however, are different than those countries’ and will depend on subsequent data reviewed by US agencies to make recommendations.