Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Booster Expansion For General Population Still Likely, Officials Say
CBS News: Francis Collins, NIH Chief, Expects FDA To Expand COVID-19 Booster Recommendation In "Coming Weeks"
Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), predicted Sunday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will widen its recommendation on who should receive a COVID-19 booster shot in the "coming weeks" after the agency recommended the additional doses for the elderly and high-risk Americans. In an interview with "Face the Nation," Collins said it was "very significant" that an FDA advisory committee unanimously voted in favor of offering the extra vaccine doses to people 65 and older, as well as to those who are at high-risk for exposure, but the panel wasn't convinced the boosters were needed for the general public. (Quinn, 9/19)
USA Today: Fauci Confident FDA Will Back Booster Shots For All
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday defended the Biden administration's booster rollout plans, downplaying confusion over the initial target date and who should actually get the additional jabs. "That was a plan that was always contingent, and every one of us said that, contingent upon the FDA’s normal regulatory process," Fauci, who made the rounds of the Sunday morning news shows, said on NBC News' "Meet the Press."President Joe Biden previously said boosters would be available to all this week. Fauci said Sunday that it was always up to the FDA with their advisers to determine "exactly what that rollout would look like." (Bacon and Santucci, 9/19)
Dr. Fauci says general population should wait for boosters —
The New York Times: Fauci Urges Americans Not To Get Boosters Before They Are Eligible
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor, defended President Biden’s decision last month to announce the availability of Covid booster shots before regulators had weighed in, and he urged vaccinated Americans to wait until they were eligible for an extra shot before getting one. Dr. Fauci’s remarks on three Sunday morning news shows followed a vote Friday by an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration, which recommended that those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine get a booster dose if they are over 65 or are at high risk of developing severe Covid-19. The panel’s recommendation, represented a more limited plan than one that Mr. Biden had announced over the summer, in which he said that, beginning Sept. 20, all Americans who had been fully vaccinated would be eligible for booster shots eight months after their last dose. (Thomas, 9/19)
Axios: Fauci: Vaccinating The Unvaccinated Remains The "Highest Priority"
NIAID director Anthony Fauci said Sunday that while the coronavirus vaccine booster rollout is important, the "highest priority" is to vaccinate the unvaccinated. Fauci's statements on NBC's "Meet the Press" come days after an FDA advisory panel voted against recommending Pfizer vaccine booster shots for younger Americans, pouring cold water on the Biden administration's plan to begin administering boosters to most individuals. (Reyes, 9/19)
Also —
The Washington Post: Fauci Says Data On Moderna, Johnson & Johnson Boosters ‘A Few Weeks Away’ From FDA Review
Anthony S. Fauci, the White House’s chief coronavirus medical adviser, said data about booster shots for those who had received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccines could be a few weeks away from being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration, days after an FDA panel approved booster shots for a limited population of those who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. “The actual data that we’ll get [on] that third shot for the Moderna and second shot for the J & J is literally a couple to a few weeks away,” Fauci said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “We’re working on that right now to get the data to the FDA, so they can examine it and make a determination about the boosters for those people.” (Wang, 9/19)
Axios: The COVID Booster Vaccine Discussion Is Far From Over
An FDA advisory panel may have green-lit a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine for a somewhat narrow slice of the population, but the messy process of figuring out who should get another shot of the vaccine — and when — has likely just begun. Many vaccinated Americans are worried about their level of protection as the pandemic continues to rage. The piecemeal booster decision-making process may be the best way to keep pace with the science, but it's also at risk of becoming extremely confusing. (Owens, 9/20)
