2nd COVID Booster Could Be Option For People 50+ In NY

NEW YORK — People 50 and older in New York could have an option to get a second COVID-19 booster shot starting early next month, The New York Times reported.

The Biden administration is not expected to recommend outright that people get the shot, but rather give those 50 and older the option of a second Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna booster, The Times reported.

While COVID-19 case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths are declining nationwide, health officials are keeping an eye on the worrying omicron subvariant, BA.2, or “stealth omicron,” which has caused new cases to more than double in the United Kingdom in recent weeks, National Public Radio reported.

On March 21, Gov. Kathy Hochul said the BA.2 subvariant has led to a slight increase in the number of new coronavirus cases statewide.

However, she said, that even though the increase from 8 cases per 100,000 to 11 cases per 100,000 is 30 percent, just a few months ago there were 400 cases per 100,000.

Hochul said the state's overall positivity rate is 2 percent, compared with January's 23 percent.

State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett said that BA.2 makes up about 42 percent of all the state's cases and has been rising over the past couple of months.

However, she said, "we have not seen the kind of rate of growth and this dominance that we've seen in the UK and in Europe," Bassett said.

Approval of a second booster is a complicated matter, though, because health experts don’t know the timing of the next COVID-19 surge, The Associated Press reported. It is more difficult to predict for a number of reasons, including the use of at-home tests, whose results aren't included in government data; and the government’s shift in data collection to focus on hospitalizations, which occur after a surge has arrived.

Citing real-world data from Israel, among a handful of countries that offer a second booster shot, Pfizer has asked the FDA to greenlight the additional booster shot for people 65 and older.

Moderna followed suit, asking the FDA to approve a broad emergency use application of an additional vaccine booster to include any adult over 18 who has gotten any authorized or approved vaccine.

Both vaccine makers cited studies that confirmed infections were two times lower and rates of severe illness were four times lower among people who received the second Pfizer booster, compared to people who received only one, according to a press release.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has scheduled an April 6 meeting of its advisory committee. The agenda for the meeting includes “considerations for use of COVID-19 vaccine booster doses and the process for COVID-19 vaccine strain selection to address current and emerging variants.” The administration doesn’t need the blessing of either the FDA or CDC to move forward, but Dr. Jesse L. Goodman, a former chief scientist at the FDA, said skipping the advisory committees would be a mistake.

“This is a complex decision that involves a pretty deep dive, and I think it would really benefit from public discussion,” Goodman, a former chief scientist at the FDA, told The Times. “I would not want to see an advisory committee skipped on this.”