Booster shots are not a new idea.
Kids get them periodically for measles and mumps, for diphtheria and for chickenpox. Adults are cautioned to get a tetanus or meningitis booster. Travelers may get an update for things like hepatitis or yellow fever.
A booster is just what it sounds like — a little something extra to keep a vaccine working hard enough to do its job. Get your pertussis vaccine when you are 6 and it could likely need to be bolstered by high school or college. Outbreaks of whooping cough — that’s the more common name of pertussis — in the last 20 years have prompted doctors to suggest boosters for adults working or caring for babies, too.
So it isn’t unusual that boosters are now being recommended for covid-19.
On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, gave her endorsement to a list of recommendations from an advisory panel. They included giving boosters to certain people who have received a Pfizer vaccine after six months. The people in question would be over 65, those who live in long term care facilities and those 50 to 64 who have underlying conditions.
Walensky also recommended the boosters for those 18 to 64 with a high risk of exposure from health care or other employment, a group the panel had chosen not to include.
This isn’t an odd inclusion, however. It’s not even inconsistent with the vaccination process that has been underway since Pfizer’s vaccine was first released to the public in December. The very first people to roll up a sleeve and receive their shots — on camera and at press conferences — were health care workers.
It also makes sense because the health care field is still swamped with care of all the other people still contracting covid-19, and struggling with having too few workers.
It is also in line with the advice being given locally.
”We want you to be ready in case you come in contact with the virus,” said Dr. Donald Yealy, UPMC’s chief medical officer and chair of emergency medicine.
UPMC is encouraging people who qualify for the shot to get it as soon as they are eligible.
A jolt to the immune system could be important in reducing not just overall transmission but breakthrough cases in the vaccinated population. Those cases have been on the rise in Allegheny County although hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated are still rarities.
What is even more important is encouraging family, friends and neighbors to get vaccinated at all. In Pennsylvania, 6.175 million people are fully vaccinated, according to the Department of Health.
The vaccines — whether initial or booster — remain “one of the strongest tools we have to change this pandemic,” Yealy said.
— The Tribune-Review/TNS
