If you got an mRNA COVID vaccine—that’s Pfizer or Moderna—you will be eligible for a booster shot on your eighth-month anniversary. That means for certain groups, September 20th. Who gets theirs first? And what happens if you jump the line? And do the boosters undermine the vaccine’s effectiveness? Herewith answers to your booster questions are Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the President and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. They spoke with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Read on for five points that could save your life—and to ensure your health and the health of others, don’t miss these Sure Signs. You Have “Long” COVID and May Not Even Know It. Woman in medical protective mask getting an injection in arm vaccination.
“It was obvious that the protection that the vaccine was affording about infection and mild to moderate disease was diminishing,” said Dr. Fauci. “It still had very high protection against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death, but the direction was going wrong. In other words, you were seeing an attenuation over some time, particularly in the context of the very troublesome and highly transmissible Delta variant.
That’s superimposed upon the experience that Israel was seeing. And they’re usually about, you know, a month or more ahead of us in the vaccine, as well as in the experience with the Delta virus and the Delta variant. And they were starting to see not only attenuation and protection against mild to moderate disease and infection, but also an uptick in hospitalizations, particularly in vulnerable people. And because of that, we felt it was much better to stay ahead of the curve.”
Scientist studies the curves of the Covic-19 pandemic and the DNA of an infected person holding a sample vial in a hospital. “It’s obvious right now that when you give someone a booster, and we’ve done studies, it increases the antibody level associated with protection to a very high level. And what happened just today, which came out from a report from the public health organization in Israel, that they’re already starting to see an effect from their boosters, their third shot, that it is helping very much in blunting that diminution in protection. So it was the right call.
I mean, it does not mean that the vaccines are not protective. They still are quite protective. We want to stay ahead of the game to ensure that that protection’s durability continues. We still feel the most important thing. Andrea is to get unvaccinated people vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can. And for those vaccinated, this recommendation for a booster is to stay ahead of the virus and ensure that the protection is high and prolonged.”
A sick woman is lying in bed with a high fever. Mitchell pointed out that this was among the first times Fauci had said you could get severe COVID after vaccination. “Right now, when you look at this country and the vaccinations that have been given, for the most part, there’s a high degree of protection against hospitalization and death,” said Dr. Fauci. “What we see with the Delta variant, breakthrough infections, which you’d expect to see in a situation where you have a vaccine, is not a hundred percent protective.
If you’re vaccinated, those breakthrough infections are mild to moderate, sometimes even asymptomatic. But we’re starting to see these signals that, over time, it’s beginning to attenuate and come down. So even though we’re protected now, rather than saying, let’s wait until we start seeing significant disease and hospitalizations, let’s get ahead of the curve. Let’s get a booster for those people. Generally, around eight months after the original regimen to prevent the kind of thing you’re talking about. We’re not seeing it now. We want to avoid it. And I believe that’s good public health policy to ensure we prevent something from happening before having to react to something happening.”
Check-in for coronavirus vaccination against Covid-19 with a doctor in the background.” I wouldn’t say that it’s dangerous” to get your booster shot before eight months, said Dr. Fauci, “but one of the things that we’ve learned from an immunological standpoint, that if you get a prime. Then a boost for two, three, to four weeks later, you get the maximum effect of a rate increase if you give the immune system a chance to mature over several months.
So when you do that, you want to make sure that people don’t suddenly decide they’re going to go out, get their second dose, you know, a few weeks ago, and now say, well, I want to get my third dose. Now. I think that might defeat the purpose. And that’s the reason why we landed at eight months. When you look at the first people who got their vaccine, it was in January, and interestingly, this works in favor of doing it correctly and adequately because those were the people who needed it.”
Doctor wearing a protective safety mask supporting and cheering up a senior patient.” The most vulnerable, the elderly healthcare workers who were at risk people in nursing homes” are the people who need the booster first, said Dr. Fauci. “So if you look at the eight-month timeframe picking, the second third is the third week in September, September 20th, you have right about eight months from that original group.
And to do it in an orderly fashion, you can do the cadence of depending upon when you got your vaccine regimen, was it February, March, April, and then you push back then. I mean, what will happen given human nature is that people are going to say, well, I don’t want to wait for them. They’re going to do it. There’s not much you can do about that but recommend the window of when it should be done.”
covid-antibody-test
Dr. Fauci says it doesn’t make sense for us all to get antibody tests and see if we’re protected after vaccination because it’s hard to prove “whether or not they reflect the full complexity of an immune response and the protective correlative immune response. We know from some studies that there was a higher degree of protection as the antibody level went up. But I think if you rely on an antibody test to make a decision, it won’t be very easy, and there may be missteps. And that’s why the best way to do it is based on a time element and not on an antibody test.”
Moderna and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine
“Let me say it here very clearly: the most important thing we do need to do is to get those 90 plus million people in this country who are eligible for vaccination, to get them vaccinated,” said Fauci. “Because even though the vaccinated people need to continue the level of protection that they have, it is as, or more, essential for the unvaccinated people to get vaccinated in the first place.
So let’s not confuse those messages—it is critical. People should not look at this and say, does that mean the vaccine doesn’t work? No, the vaccines work; the booster that we’re talking about is ensuring that very high protection lasts for an extended time at a high level. The vaccines do work. And because of that, we’ve got to get the unvaccinated people vaccinated.”
Brunette woman wearing a KN95 FPP2 mask. Follow Fauci’s fundamentals and help end this pandemic, no matter where you live—get vaccinated ASAP; if you live in an area with low vaccination rates, wear an N95 face mask, don’t travel, social distance, avoid large crowds, don’t go indoors with people you’re not sheltering with (especially in bars), practice good hand hygiene, and to protect your life and the lives of others, don’t visit any of these 35 Places You’re Most Likely to Catch COVID.
