PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The CDC’s vaccine advisory committee was scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss its updated COVID-19 vaccine policy.
The CDC has also followed the FDA on two other changes. It is lowering the time before COVID-19 boosters from six months down to five, and it is greenlighting a third dose of Pfizer vaccine for immunocompromised children, like organ transplant recipients.
Those actions are in line with CDC recommendations for immunocompromised adults, a third dose 28 days after the second shot followed by a booster five months later.
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“Vaccines really have been an extraordinary lifesaver," said Dr. Emily Blumberg, the director of transplant infectious diseases at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Even many of my transplant patients who've gotten COVID have managed to stay out of the hospital and get through their infection at home because they were vaccinated.”
She said immunocompromised is a broad term, and some do better with immune responses than others.
“For example, preventive monoclonal antibodies may be more helpful for some of those people," said Dr. Blumberg.
"But at the very least, every single immunosuppressed patient should have received three doses of vaccine.”
She said mRNA vaccines have been effective in a majority of transplant recipients.
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Dr. Blumberg added that while it can be frustrating not knowing when and how the pandemic will shift to the next phase, two years of advancement in vaccines and treatments has been amazing.
“It's extraordinarily exciting to think, how far we've come," she said.
"And how much benefit has been derived from, especially from the vaccines, but from the development of new therapeutics that are now being offered to people, you know, that we could never have imagined two years ago.”
