In response to US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granting Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for the use of a third “booster” vaccine dose in severely immunocompromised patients, Contagion Live spoke to infectious disease, virology, and vaccinology experts on the merits of a booster vaccine dose EUA. David Weber, MD, shared his thoughts following the FDA decision.
“Certainly, I think it’s the right thing to do. First, we know that for severely immunocompromised patients—organ transplant recipients, those on chemotherapy—we know with 2 doses of vaccine, many mount no antibody response. And for those who mount an antibody response, many of them are suboptimal, meaning substantially below the level you would find in a healthy individual. We also know that this translates into lower vaccine effectiveness with COVID-19 when compared to the 95% protection in the studies for the mRNA vaccines against symptomatic disease, and the very high protection against hospitalizations and deaths.”