Warn of the coming hard days Coronavirus disease The president of the National Institutes of Health said on Sunday that the United States may decide in the next few weeks whether to provide Americans with a booster injection of the coronavirus this fall.
The first to receive them may be medical staff, nursing home residents, and other American seniors.
Dr. Francis Collins also once again begged the unvaccinated people to be vaccinated, calling them the “sitting ducks” of the Delta variant that is raging across the country and shows little signs of laxity.
“This is a very steep rise, and there is no sign of peaking,” he said.
Federal health officials have been actively studying whether additional injections may be needed for vaccinated people as early as this fall. The number of cases in the United States and the situation in other countries such as Israel are reviewed “almost every day”. Preliminary research shows that people who were vaccinated in January However, the protective effect of vaccines against serious diseases has declined.
Israel has been providing coronavirus boosters to people over 60 years of age who had been vaccinated more than five months ago.
The United States has not made any decision, because so far, the cases here still show that after receiving two doses of Pfizer or Moderna program or a one-time Johnson & Johnson vaccine, people are still highly protected from COVID-19 (including delta variants) Infringe.
But US health officials made it clear on Sunday that they are preparing for the possibility that the time for vaccination may come sooner or later.
“There are concerns that the effectiveness of vaccines may begin to diminish,” Collins said. “And delta is an annoying problem for us. The combination of the two means that we may need boosters, perhaps starting with healthcare providers and nursing homes, and then gradually moving forward.” People, such as senior citizens in the United States who were first vaccinated after being vaccinated, went on the market at the end of last year.
He said that since the delta variant only started to have a serious impact on the United States in July, case data in the “coming weeks” will help the United States make a decision.
Stephen Hoge, President of Moderna, said that even though most of the symptoms so far are not life-threatening, it is surprising to see some “breakthrough” infections in people who have been vaccinated within six months. . “I think this shows that we will need to strengthen the vaccine to survive the winter,” he said.
Last week, the US Food and Drug Administration stated that as delta variants continue to proliferate, people with weakened immune systems can get additional doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines to better protect them.
The FDA has not approved the third COVID-19 booster injection.Anyway, some people in America are getting them
“If the data shows that we think we really need to provide extra doses for people in nursing homes or the elderly, we will definitely be ready to do so soon,” said the doctor. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.
Although the U.S. currently has an average of approximately 129,000 new infections every day-700% more than in early July-this number may jump to 200,000 in the next few weeks, which is the worst since the pandemic. Collins said at a level never seen in days, January and February.
Both he and Fauci emphasized that the best way to stop the virus is to vaccinate unvaccinated people.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, currently, approximately 60% of the U.S. population has at least one dose of the vaccine, and nearly 51% have been fully vaccinated. Areas with low vaccination rates are particularly hit by infections, such as Louisiana, Texas, Florida, and Mississippi.
The rapid increase in the number of infections across the United States has led to a shortage of intensive care unit beds, nurses and other front-line staff in virus hotspots, and can no longer keep up with the large number of unvaccinated patients. Health officials also warned that more children who are not yet eligible for the vaccine may be infected, but it is unclear whether the delta variant will cause the more serious disease.
“Considering that we never thought we would return to that field again, this is heartbreaking,” Collins said of the overall rise in the number of infections in the United States. “But we have encountered infectious delta variants and this heartbreaking situation where 90 million of them have not been vaccinated and they have reservations about this virus. This is the chaos we are in. We are in this situation. In an injury.”
Fauci said that as more and more people get vaccinated, in many places, everyone-whether vaccinated or unvaccinated-must make their own contribution to “mitigation,” such as in school. Wear masks in other public places.
“We just realized that we are dealing with a public health crisis,” he said. “The more infections and the more they spread, the greater the chance that the virus will continue to evolve and mutate.”
Collins spoke on the “Fox News Sunday”, Fauci appeared on the CBS “Face the Country” program, and Hogg spoke on the “Sunday Morning Futures” program on the Fox News Channel.
© 2021 Canadian Press
