WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is planning to give Americans age 50 or older the option of a second booster of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna coronavirus vaccine without recommending outright that they get one, according to several people familiar with the plan.
Major uncertainties have complicated the decision, including how long the protection from a second booster would last, how to explain the plan to the public and even whether the overall goal is to shield whoever is deemed eligible only from severe disease or from less serious infections as well, since they could lead to long Covid.
Much depends on when the next wave of Covid infections will hit, and how hard. Should the nation be hit by a virulent surge in the next few months, offering a second booster now for older Americans could arguably save thousands of lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations.
But if no major wave hits until the fall, extra shots now could turn out to be a questionable intervention that wastes vaccine doses and that could deepen vaccination fatigue and sow doubt about the government’s strategy. The highly contagious Omicron subvariant BA.2 is helping to drive another surge of coronavirus cases in Europe and is responsible for about a third of new cases in the United States, but health officials have said they do not anticipate a major surge caused by the subvariant.
Federal health officials have hotly debated the way forward, with some strongly in favor of a second booster now and others skeptical. But they appear to be coalescing around a plan to give at least older Americans the option, in case infections surge again before the fall. It was unclear how broad the group would be. In the fall, officials say, Americans of all ages should get another shot.
The Food and Drug Administration could authorize a second booster early next week, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would then follow with its own advice.
A second booster is at best a stopgap measure. Many experts argue that the existing coronavirus vaccines need to be modified because the virus’s variants are diminishing their power; the question is how to reconfigure them. A surge in the fall is considered highly likely, whether it comes in the form of the Omicron variant, a subvariant like BA.2 or a new lineage entirely.
