Protection From Covid Wanes Significantly 6 Months After 2 Doses: White House

Protection from coronavirus infection and death wanes significantly more than six months after the primary series of vaccination, and a set of studies from different parts of the world show booster doses of Covid vaccine enhanced protection against the pandemic, according to White House Covid Response team experts.

Chief Medical Advisor to the President Dr. Anthony Fauci cited results from multiple studies at a routine briefing Monday.

“It is very clear now from a number of studies, including this from a U.S. veterans study published in Science just a couple of weeks ago, from March to September, and take a look at waning immunity against infection: With Johnson & Johnson, with Moderna, and with Pfizer BioNtech, as you go from month to month, the immunity clearly wanes. The effectiveness overall against infection declines from 87.9 percent to 48.1 percent,” he told reporters.

The top immunology expert said that an Israeli study shows individuals who received a booster dose of a BioNTech vaccine had a diminution in the risk of infection of 11.3-fold difference and a rate of severe illness was lowered by a factor of almost 20.

In a study from the UK in people 50 years and older, it was evident that when comparing the protection of two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech to three, it went up from 63 percent to 94 percent.

In the two-month interim analysis of a cumulative data of 10,000 participants from Brazil, South Africa, and United States, the efficacy against symptomatic disease in those who received the third dose versus the second dose was 95.6 percent.

“If you look at the peak antibody response, which is generally a reflection of protection, and you look at it after the second dose and then compare it 28 days after the third dose, and look at the difference: In younger people, it goes from 55 to 872. In the elderly, it goes from 32 to 706,” Dr. Fauci told reporters.

All adults are eligible to get boosters six months after receiving the second shot for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines or two months after the second dose of J&J vaccine.

The safety data showed that serious adverse events after a booster dose are rare and, in general, people had fewer reactions after their third dose than after their second dose. Reactions include sore arms, headaches, and joint aches.

The Biden administration reassured that it has secured enough supply of all three vaccines for booster shots for every adult.

White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said that across the last three days of the last weekend, 3 million booster shots were administered in the country.

He added that ahead of Monday’s deadline set by President Joe Biden for all federal employees to get vaccinated, the government has achieved 95 percent compliance and 90 percent of the 3.5 million federal workers are already vaccinated.

“We have 98 percent compliance at the IRS, 99 percent compliance at the FBI, nearly 98 percent compliance at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 93 percent at TSA, and 99 percent at the FAA”.

As per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, 47 million eligible American adults and more than 12 million teens are still not fully vaccinated and remain at highest risk of disease.

Unvaccinated people are six times more likely to test positive for Covid than vaccinated individuals.

Unvaccinated people are at 14 times greater risk of dying from the disease than people who are vaccinated.

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