Booster shots can wait, scientists say in paper

Fully vaccinated people do not need coronavirus booster shots now, said an international group of scientists in a paper published in a medical journal on Monday.

In the paper published in The Lancet, the experts, including two outgoing United States Food and Drug Administration vaccine regulators, said they reviewed studies of the vaccines' performance and concluded that shots are working well despite the very contagious Delta variant, especially against severe disease.

"Currently available studies do not provide credible evidence of substantially declining protection against severe disease, which is the primary goal of vaccination," said Ana Maria Henao-Restrepo, the study's author and a World Health Organization epidemiologist, in a statement.

The experts said boosters may be useful for some people with weak immune systems, but providing boosters would not outweigh the benefit of using those doses to protect the billions of people who remain unvaccinated worldwide.

They concluded that "even in populations with fairly high vaccination rates, the unvaccinated are still the major drivers of transmission".

The administration of US President Joe Biden has proposed administering vaccine boosters eight months after initial shots. The White House has begun planning for boosters later this month, if both the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agree.

Call for a delay

Experts from the WHO have called for countries to delay broad booster plans as many countries still lack vaccine supplies in the face of outbreaks driven by the Delta variant.

The report comes after Biden announced a massive push to mandate vaccinations among nearly two-thirds of the US workforce last week.

According to a CNN poll published on Monday, a slim majority of US citizens are now in favor of vaccine mandates at work as well as school and large sporting events.

The poll, which was conducted from Aug 3 to Sept 7 among 2,199 adults, shows that 51 percent of responders generally support vaccine mandates in public places and believe they are "an acceptable way to increase the vaccination rate".

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN that even broader vaccine mandates may be needed to control the pandemic in the US if vaccinations do not increase.

Millions of US citizens still need to get vaccinated to help get the pandemic under control, which could take many more mandates, Fauci said.

Meanwhile, data from Johns Hopkins University shows COVID-19 deaths among people under the age of 55 have roughly matched highs near 1,800 a week set during last winter's surge.

Heng Weili in New York contributed to this story.