The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to revise its emergency use authorizations for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, allowing immunocompromised adults to get a third dose, two people familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The announcement is expected to come on Thursday, the people said. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines involve two shots, but there is evidence that people who are immunocompromised may only develop low levels of antibodies after being vaccinated, if any at all. A recent study at Johns Hopkins University of organ transplant recipients, who take medicine to suppress their immune systems so their new organs aren't rejected, showed that a third vaccine dose increased their antibody levels.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
5 educational cartoons about the Harvard pushbackCartoons Artists take on academic freedom, institutional resistance, and more
-
One-pan black chickpeas with baharat and orange recipeThe Week Recommends This one-pan dish offers bold flavours, low effort and minimum clean up
-
Merz's coalition deal: a 'betrayal' of Germany?Talking Point With liberalism, freedom and democracy under threat globally, it's a time for 'giants' – but this is a 'coalition of the timid'
-
The sneaking rise of whooping coughUnder the Radar The measles outbreak isn't the only one to worry about
-
RFK Jr. visits Texas as 2nd child dies from measlesSpeed Read An outbreak of the vaccine-preventable disease continues to grow following a decade of no recorded US measles deaths
-
Shingles vaccine cuts dementia risk, study findsSpeed Read Getting vaccinated appears to significantly reduce the chances of developing Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia
-
Measles outbreak spreads, as does RFK Jr.'s influenceSpeed Read The outbreak centered in Texas has grown to at least three states and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is promoting unproven treatments
-
Five years on: How Covid changed everythingFeature We seem to have collectively forgotten Covid’s horrors, but they have completely reshaped politics
-
RFK Jr. offers alternative remedies as measles spreadsSpeed Read Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. makes unsupported claims about containing the spread as vaccine skepticism grows
-
Texas outbreak brings 1st US measles death since 2015Speed read The outbreak is concentrated in a 'close-knit, undervaccinated' Mennonite community in rural Gaines County
-
Mystery illness spreading in Congo rapidly kills dozensSpeed Read The World Health Organization said 53 people have died in an outbreak that originated in a village where three children ate a bat carcass
