“We are far behind the eight balls,” said Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. The release of the first round of amplifiers, approved in the US last fall, “just fell off the cliff”, with many Americans still not realizing that they are eligible or that the amplifier is recommended. With a possible second reinforcement on the horizon for vulnerable groups, the Biden administration continues to struggle to woo the US public interest in additional shots – and funding from Congress to pay for Covid initiatives. “We’re almost out of money for the pandemic, which is scary because we don’t know what’s coming around the corner,” said Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Pfizer-BioNtech asked the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on March 15 for another round of boosters for people aged 65 and over, while Moderna went one step further on March 17 and asked for more boosters among those 18 and above to give the FDA “flexibility” in considering who will benefit from additional shots, including vulnerable younger people, the company said. These doses will be the initial composition of the vaccines. Omicron-specific vaccines are still being tested, but scientists believe updating the vaccines as the virus evolves could broaden immune responses to future variants. A $ 15 billion funding package for trials, treatments, vaccines and more was unexpectedly cut by a congressional spending bill March 9. Health officials spoke to Democratic senators about the urgent need for funding for Covid at a meeting Wednesday, Politico reports, but the plan may face opposition: Republicans, who were not present at the meeting, say the White House request should be accompanied by $ 22.5 billion in equal cuts in government spending elsewhere. There is enough funding to give a fourth dose of the vaccine to immunocompromised people who are already eligible for the vaccine, and to people over the age of 65 if the vaccine is approved in the coming weeks, said Jeff Coronation Response Coordinator Je The White House briefing on Wednesday. However, wider aid campaigns will not be funded under the current budget shortfalls, and first- and second-rate campaigns could also be affected in the long run. The collapse of funding could also affect future research into updated vaccines and treatments. “Maybe we will see a new variant that has gotten out of it all and we need a new vaccine,” Wallace said. Without funding to create and then distribute the updated vaccines, “this will be an issue”. Three doses were an average of 94% effective against the need for mechanical ventilation or death during the Omicron explosion, according to a study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published on Friday. That kind of efficiency is “a miracle,” Topol said. “This is unbelievable, but it has never been conveyed to the public – it’s amazing to me.” “If we had chemotherapy that would do that for cancer – it increased the chances of survival so much – everyone with cancer would want to get it,” Wallace said. However, only about 29% of the US population has been strengthened. Less than half (44%) of all Americans who received their initial shots continued in the series, although this percentage is higher (67%) in people aged 65 and over. “There was a huge push to get people fully vaccinated, which was two doses, but not so much a boost to the souvenir,” Wallace said. “Many people just do not understand that the aid is now available to everyone.” When supplements were first introduced, they were limited to certain populations, including the elderly and immunocompromised Americans as well as health care workers, before being opened to all adults and eventually to children 12 years of age and older. “There was a lot of confusion and that’s why absorption is so bad,” Topol said. Some people – including older Americans and health care workers – received their first boosters last fall, raising concerns about declining efficacy among those most at risk of getting sick or getting too sick from the virus. The effectiveness of the third dose in preventing hospitalization is reduced to 78% four months after the reminder, according to another recent CDC report. In a recent study from Israel, a fourth dose of mRNA increased antibody levels and protected slightly better against infection. The members of the FDA’s Independent Advisory Committee will meet on April 6 to discuss the aid authorization policies they will pursue, especially in light of the new and emerging variants. No vote is scheduled for the board meeting, which will focus on a framework for amplifiers rather than specific requests for authorization. The CDC recommends that anyone 12 years of age or older who has received two doses of an mRNA vaccine or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine should also receive a booster dose two or five months later, depending on the vaccine. Immunosuppressed individuals – including those being treated for cancer, organ transplant recipients, people living with HIV, and patients receiving regular immunosuppressive drugs such as corticosteroids – are already eligible for a fourth dose because they may not have a strong or original three shots. About 2.7% of Americans, or about 9 million people, are immunosuppressed. Officials must also step up efforts to vaccinate those who are not fully vaccinated, representing about one-third of the U.S. population. “We have to try to penetrate this team in some way, because it’s great,” Wallace said. And vaccinating the rest of the world is the key to stopping the growth of the virus and the emergence of new variants worldwide. These three groups – those immunosuppressed, those over 65 and those who have not been vaccinated – should be given priority before taking another fourth dose, Wallace said. The U.S. is likely to see another wave of Covid, and vaccines may take weeks to become fully effective, making vaccination campaigns urgent now, experts said. “It’s good that there is a calm in the circulating virus – that’s great,” Topol said. “It’s time to dump her and move on.” “People are lullabies in a zone of complacency, which is unfortunate,” Topol said. “It is understandable after all the fatigue, and everyone is so sick with it, but it is not what is on paper and we have to prepare, defend and protect people.”
