Why you may not need a Covid-19 booster? 

Top scientists have dealt a blow to President Joe Biden’s plan to begin rolling out Covid-19 booster shots to most Americans. On September 17, a US Food and Drug Administration advisory committee rejected a bid to approve a third Pfizer dose for anyone age 16 and older. Instead, the committee threw its support behind a proposal to grant emergency use authorization of boosters for people age 65 and older or who are at high risk for severe disease, such as health-care workers or people with underlying conditions.

For weeks, scientists have vigorously debated whether there is enough data to justify an extra dose for most Americans. Two top scientists reportedly resigned from the US Food and Drug Administration over the plan to administer boosters, which they have since criticized in a paper published in The Lancet.

The data trickling in so far does seem to suggest that the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are less able to prevent infection after six to eight months, but experts point out there are wide discrepancies.

In July, Israel said data from its highly vaccinated population shows that Pfizer’s vaccine is now only 64 percent effective against preventing infection. Then there were the alarming reports that month of a large COVID-19 outbreak in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Out of hundreds who had been infected, about three-quarters were fully vaccinated. By contrast, a United Kingdom study in August found that the Pfizer vaccine is 88 percent effective against the Delta variant. Weeks later, a study of New York State residents showed a combined vaccine effectiveness of 79.8 percent among those who had received the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson jabs.

One thing that’s perfectly clear to scientists is that the Covid-19 vaccines are still performing admirably where it matters most: protecting against severe disease and death. In the aftermath of the Cape Cod outbreak, scientists pointed out that only four of the people who got breakthrough cases had to be hospitalized. And according to a September 10 report from the CDC, the vaccines are more than 90 percent effective against hospitalization and death. Unvaccinated people are 10 times more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated people and 11 times more likely to die.

Booster shots are additional doses of the original vaccine that increase antibodies in the nose and throat, so they would decrease the chance of getting an infection in the first place. And researchers say that the data on breakthroughs is an early signal that the vaccines’ ability to prevent infection is waning, particularly among people with compromised immune systems and older populations.

National Geographic