PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Pfizer and Moderna are asking the Food and Drug Administration to approve a fourth round of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots. But should they even be called booster shots?
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, said using the word “booster” has become confusing. Offit, one of the top vaccine experts in the country, said we first need to figure out what we’re trying to accomplish.
“I think we should stop using the word ‘booster dose.’ I think we should define for whom this is a three-dose vaccine and for whom it’s not,” he suggested.
In other words, he said there may be cases, like people over the age of 70 or with certain health conditions, where a third shot months later helps.
“But for otherwise healthy young people, it’s not clear that they really need that third dose months later to be adequately protected against severe disease, because to date, that does appear to still be holding up.”
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Offit added that vaccines are doing their jobs by protecting against severe disease and death. However, messaging around who needs another dose got muddied up last summer, when people who were vaccinated tested positive with mild symptoms or no symptoms.
“We should have never called that a breakthrough illness,” he said. “If you’re protected against serious disease, then that’s the goal for the vaccine. The goal of the vaccine is not to prevent mild illness.
“If we have a goal for this vaccine [to prevent] all asymptomatic or mild infection, then we’re going to need to frequently boost with another dose, and that’s not a reasonable public health strategy.”