Biden got the third vaccine against COVID-19: is there really any benefit from booster injections

Biden received a live Covid-27 vaccine booster shot on September 19, reports CNBC.

Photo: Shutterstock

President Joe Biden received a Covid-19 booster shot on Monday in line with the latest guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The World Health Organization is opposing widespread booster vaccinations, saying richer countries should give additional doses to countries with minimum vaccination levels.

At 78, Biden became eligible for an additional shot under new guidance released late last week. Biden received his first Pfizer shot late last year and his second in January.

“Boosters are important, but the most important thing we need to do is get as many people vaccinated as possible,” Biden said before the injection.

“The vast majority of Americans are doing the right thing. More than 77% of adults have received at least one vaccine,” he said. “About 23% have not received any vaccinations. And this clear minority is causing enormous damage to the rest of the country. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. That's why I promote vaccination requirements wherever I can."

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walenski on Friday launched a proposal to distribute Covid-19 booster injections from Pfizer and BioNTech to those working in high-risk professional and institutional settings.

Walenski also approved the spread of booster shots to older Americans and adults with underlying medical conditions at least six months after their first round of shots, according to the advisory group.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 79, announced on Monday afternoon that he had also received an additional vaccine and called on Americans to join him in getting the shot.

The Kentucky Republican's statement in the Senate courtroom was noteworthy given the difference in U.S. vaccination rates among Democrats and Republicans. An August poll by NBC News found that 88% of Democrats said they had been vaccinated, compared with only 55% of Republicans.

Biden backed the US decision to offer vaccines to other countries, saying America is doing more than any other country in the world to distribute vaccines around the world.

“We’ll do our part,” he said. “We have also committed a lot of funding to COVAX, which is delivering vaccines to underserved areas of the world. So we have many, many opportunities for everyone in the world...to vaccinate.”

Roughly 60 million of the 100 million Americans who originally received the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine are now eligible for a third vaccine as the highly infectious delta variant continues to spread throughout the country, including healthcare workers, teachers, grocery store employees and other workers.

The final CDC decision allows Biden to claim victory even though he didn't get everything he wanted. The administration said it plans to begin giving revaccinations to people 16 and older this month.

While the CDC group's recommendation does not give the Biden administration everything it wanted, boosters will still be used for the millions of Americans who initially received Pfizer shots.

An estimated 2,6 million Americans have received additional doses of the vaccine since health officials allowed additional Pfizer or Moderna vaccines to be given to people with weakened immune systems in August, according to data compiled by the CDC.

Some scientists, including at least two from the FDA, said they were not fully convinced that every American who received the Pfizer vaccine needed additional doses at this time.

Research shows that immunity to Covid-19 gradually decreases after two rounds of vaccination. Is the third dose of vaccine effective? What type of vaccines is best for making it? And is there a need for constant revaccination?

On December 9, 2020, 91-year-old Margaret Keenan and 81-year-old William Shakespeare, who, like his famous namesake, was born in Warwickshire, became the first people to receive the Covid-19 vaccine outside of clinical trials.

The hall exploded with applause. The day was called V-day, a play on the English words “vaccine” and “victory,” and the atmosphere was generally amazing. The end of the pandemic was a long way off, but it was the first step.

In nine months, 5,7 billion doses of various vaccines have been made worldwide, and now 41,8% of the world's population is at least partially protected. However, their number is growing every day.

“The frustrating thing about this pandemic is that scientists are really pissing people off,” says Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at University College London, “because our conclusions are constantly changing because the subject is so vague.”

Now that we know that in the coming years we will have to live with Covid-19 tons of its many variants, another important question arises. Are two doses of the vaccine enough?

Altmann explains that back in April and May, he said in interviews that most vaccinated people would not need a booster dose.

“Even if variants of the virus appear that reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine by 10 times, the number of antibodies that were developed after vaccination is 1000 times greater,” the scientist notes.

And then Delta appeared. And a high level of antibodies after vaccination did not guarantee absolute protection against the disease.

Do you need a booster vaccine: what is the use of it

From radically different immunity in different groups of people to the hypothetical possibility that a third dose may actually reduce the body's defenses, there are many questions about why getting a booster dose is so much more difficult, reports with the BBC.

fourth wave

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Israel became the first in the world to vaccinate most of its population, prompting Pfizer's chief developer to call the country "a laboratory of sorts."

Israel had one of the lowest infection rates in the world in May. And within a month, the government began to drastically reduce restrictions, allowing a large gathering of people and canceling the wearing of masks on the street.

But already in early July, the first case of Delta was registered in the country, and soon the incidence began to gain momentum.

As Jews began preparing for their major holiday, Yom Kippur, in mid-September, Israel was recording 10 cases of the disease daily. Considering the population of the country, this is more than anywhere else on Earth.

The researchers found that although those vaccinated were less likely to develop a severe course of Covid-19, immunity declined over time. For example, those who received the second dose in January developed severe illness 1,7 times more often than those who were vaccinated two months later.

“Fortunately, there are no deaths involved,” adds Altmann.

Today, most of the world is in the fourth wave of the pandemic. In recent weeks, the virus has risen to record levels in Scotland, Japan and the Philippines, as in many European countries. And there is growing evidence that immunosuppression is becoming a global problem.

One UK study found that two doses of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine were 88% effective after one month and 74% effective after five to six months. And the effectiveness of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine decreased from 77% to 67%.

Just like protection gained through natural infection, immunity from a vaccine gradually wanes. Although whether this matters is not yet clear.

Again the fight for the vaccine

Booster vaccination programs are gradually being rolled out around the world.

In Israel, the third dose for people over 60 years old was taken at the end of July. And now additional vaccination is available to every citizen over 12 years old if at least five months have passed since the second dose was vaccinated.

The list of countries that will follow this example is growing daily.

Recently in the United States, hundreds of thousands of additional doses have been administered to clinically vulnerable patients since August 13. The Biden administration plans to provide them to all American adults eight weeks after the second shot.

On the subject:In the United States created a patch for COVID-19: it can be more effective than vaccination

Italy, China, Serbia and Russia have also introduced booster programs.

Is it really necessary

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It is obvious that vaccines effectively protect against death of the disease, no matter how much time has passed since the vaccination.

In the UK, from January to July 2021, there were only 256 deaths among fully immunized people. They were found mainly in the most vulnerable groups, for example, elderly people with weakened immune systems.

This is where a booster dose may be most beneficial. For example, for organ transplant patients who need to take medications to suppress the immune system. These people had extremely low antibody levels.

But is there any evidence that a booster dose is actually effective?

Let's go back to Israel, which began to introduce the third vaccine long before the rest of the world.

One study of fully vaccinated people over the age of 60 found that those who received the booster dose five months after the second shot had much stronger immunity than those who did not get the third shot.

They were 11 times less likely to be infected with Covid-19 and 19 times less likely to be seriously ill.

Pfizer's own data shows that booster shots restore vaccine efficacy up to 95%.

Complex picture

However, even if the third dose helps to solve the problem with a decrease in immunity, many questions remain unanswered.

For example, which vaccine to use for the booster dose?

In Israel, where most people received the first two Pfizer shots, the vaccine is also used for additional doses. The UK government also plans to vaccinate exclusively with Pfizer for the third time, but the majority of the population in the country received the first and second doses of Oxford / AstraZeneca.

Vaccinations with different vaccines for the first and second time have shown advantages compared to giving the same vaccine both times. However, data on mixing vaccines in the third stage, confirming the effectiveness and safety, are not yet available.

“Again, it’s like so many other things in this pandemic, we’re trying to build the plane almost in the air,” Altmann says.

In his opinion, additional vaccination with an mRNA-based vaccine, such as Pfizer or Moderna, works well. But the researcher has some doubts about the effectiveness of the third dose of vector vaccines.

MRNA vaccines stimulate the body's cells to produce a protein that triggers the body's immune response. Whereas vector vaccines, such as Oxford / AstraZeneca, deliver a safe virus to the body that carries the code elements of the Covid-19 thorn protein.

There is a theoretical possibility that re-infection with a (inactivated) virus multiple times might be a bad idea.

“We've never done this before, and there's a good chance that the body will start producing antibodies against the vaccine itself and stop it working,” Altmann says. The researcher wonders whether the UK's vaccination advisory committee has taken this into account.

Another question is whether we will get better protection from the third vaccine if it recognizes new variants of the virus, such as Delta.

“You could write a doctoral dissertation on this topic,” says Altmann. “The world is complex, and people have very different forms of protective immunity.”

At first, we were all divided into only two groups: those who had been ill, and those who did not. But now our paths are developing in different ways.

The scientist explains that one person, for example, could have been infected with the original variant of Covid-19, then received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, then became infected with the Delta strain.

Someone else could have received a different brand of vaccine and become infected with a different variant of the virus, such as the Alpha strain identified for the first time in Kent.

“How do you figure out what sequence of spikes or mutations built into a vaccine will make it useful over the next one to two years?” says Altmann.

In an ideal world, Altmann would like governments to account for this variability in population immunity and perhaps test people's antibody levels to see if they really need a third dose at all.

Other difficult questions are the amount of active ingredient in the third dose. Britain plans to administer smaller quantities of the vaccine during the third jab to ensure larger doses are available to developing countries.

It is not yet clear what period should elapse between the second and third doses. If Israel has a five-month break, the US plans to wait eight months.

Booster future

However, perhaps the most difficult question is how long it will take to restore human immunity after booster vaccination.

Altmann also suggests that booster doses will eventually become annual, but whether science will approve of this remains to be seen. According to the scientist, this is more of a logistic solution than an immunological one.

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“I can imagine the health department reasoning that the easiest way to do this is at the same time every fall. Let’s just get more doses out into the world and get it done,” says Altmann.

It seems that Israel is already close to such a scenario. As soon as they announced the vaccination of all citizens with the third dose, the Israeli “virus king” Salman Zarka proposed starting preparations for the fourth stage of vaccinations.

As he noted to the Times of Israel: “This is how our life will be from now on—in waves.”

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