FDA vaccine chief says ALL Americans will need fourth COVID-19 vaccine by fall

More Covid injections are on the way for Americans, but daily infections are close to being pandemics and virus deaths continue to rise, causing many in the United States to unite to emerge from the pandemic.

Dr. Peter Marks, who heads the Center for Biological Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and makes him the agency’s chief vaccine organizer, said in a conference call Tuesday that he believes all Americans need a fourth vaccine. as soon as possible this fall.

The comments came on the day the FDA approved the second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for all Americans age 50 and older, including eligible individuals who are immunocompromised. 12 years old.

The move came as Covid cases and deaths continued to decline. There are an average of 31,090 cases per day in America, a steady figure for the past week. Deaths are also falling sharply in the United States, with the country recording 802 per day, a 22% drop over the past seven days.

While the virus situation in America appears to be improving, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the world experienced 45,000 Covid deaths last week, with much of the increase due to a change in the healthcare system, although most of this increase was 40% week to week. the way the organization beats case counts.

“It wouldn’t be surprising if there is a potential need for people to get an additional boost this fall along with a more general support campaign,” Marks told reporters.

“The decision may be made to switch to a vaccine against one of the variants or something, rather than the vaccines we currently have, which are called vaccines against the prototype of the virus.”

Dr. The FDA’s lead vaccine regulator, Peter Marks (pictured), said he expects all Americans to need a fourth vaccine for COVID-19 this fall.

The agency has scheduled an advisory committee meeting for April 6 to discuss the future of booster shots in America, including the fourth shots and beyond.

One study in Israel has found that the fourth dose reduces the risk of hospitalization or death from the virus, but other studies have found that it does little to protect young adults who are rarely hospitalized or die from the virus anyway.

Not all experts believe that shooting is also necessary.

Dr. Anna Durbin is an international public health expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and has been critical of Pfizer, Moderna, and the White House’s attempt to launch COVID-19 booster injections before they are necessary. She told ABC last week that she doesn’t believe many Americans will benefit from the extra hits.

“I think there are very few people who need a fourth dose,” he said.

In August, as the White House planned to launch the first mass COVID-19 reinforcements, Durbin was also a critic and told DailyMail.com there was little science to back the decision.

“Overall, it’s too soon to recommend a fourth dose except for those who are immunocompromised,” said Dr. Paul Goepfert, professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, at the ABC.

The extra hits were confirmed in part by fears that the BA.2 stealth variant would gain ground in the United States.

The CDC reports that the more contagious “hidden” BA.2 strain (pale pink) of Omicron is currently dominant in the United States. Omicron variant accounts for every single series of Covid cases in the United States

Named for its ability to evade detection by certain sequencing methods, this strain is considered the most contagious version of Covid to date, but is as mild as the BA.1 version of Omciron that took the world by storm last year. .

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Tuesday that it accounts for 55% of active Covid cases in the US, assuming BA.1’s role as the country’s dominant strain.

Overall, Omicron is still the dominant variant making up every single case listed by the CDC, the agency reported.

It is feared that this strain could trigger a new wave of cases in the United States, as it has in other parts of the world, in recent weeks.

WHO warned that the increase in cases in March, which reversed the one-month downward trend in Europe, Africa and Asia, is only the beginning of the BA.2 increase.

This week, the organization reported that although the number of cases fell again, Kovid deaths began to increase worldwide.

Nearly ten million new COVID-19 infections and more than 45,000 deaths were reported worldwide last week, after a 23% drop in deaths in the previous week.

The increase in reported deaths compared to last week’s 33,000 is primarily due to an accounting change; WHO noted that countries, including Chile and the United States, are changing the way they describe deaths from COVID-19.

Additionally, more than 4,000 deaths were added last week from the Indian state of Maharashtra, which was not originally included in the COVID-19 death toll, according to the WHO.

WHO has repeatedly stated that the number of COVID-19 cases is probably a massive underestimate of the coronavirus prevalence.

The agency has warned countries in recent weeks not to halt its extensive testing and other surveillance measures, saying this will hamper efforts to closely monitor the spread of the virus.

“The data is getting less representative, less current and less robust,” the WHO said.

“This hinders our collective ability to track where the virus is, how it spreads and how it evolves – information and analytics that are crucial to effectively end the acute phase of the pandemic.”