PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — If you got the two-shot Pfizer vaccine, should you get a Moderna booster shot? Or, if you got the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, could a Pfizer booster be in your future? The FDA will reportedly approve this sort of mix-and-match approach, perhaps as early as this week.
The FDA would first need to formally approve the Moderna and J&J boosters. Then they would give a thumbs-up to the mix-and-match approach. This could come as early as Wednesday, as was first reported in the New York Times and confirmed by other major news media.
At last week's vaccine advisory committee meeting, when this approach was discussed, Dr. Melinda Wharton, associate director for vaccine policy at the CDC, said mixing and matching will lead to greater flexibility for patients and health care providers.
For example, she said, a pharmacy that supports people living in a long-term care community would not need to have both the Moderna and Pfizer boosters on hand. Either one would be permitted for any patient, and effective as a booster.
Or, she said, people who don't really know which vaccine they got or don't have their records handy would be safe getting either vaccine as a booster.
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Dr. Paul Offit, one of the nation's foremost vaccine experts at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, has said that the data supports a scenario in which people who got the J&J shot and get a Moderna or Pfizer booster.
A federally funded study showed that there was a significant antibody response, especially for those who got the J&J vaccine initially and were boosted with a Moderna or Pfizer shot. The Moderna booster response was particularly effective in this case, according to the study, and there were no major side effects. Researchers caution, however, that these are early results based on a small sample size. The study is ongoing, and more follow up is needed.
Many state and local health officials have been clamoring for this flexibility, and Offit says he thinks federal regulators should move quickly on the approval.
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