FDA’s Final Decision on Boosters Expected Later This Week, Fauci Says

• Dr. Anthony Fauci said the Food and Drug Administration’s final decision on making booster shots available is expected later this week, following Friday’s decision by its vaccine advisory panel against broadly offering boosters of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine. The advisory panel did unanimously vote in favor of offering boosters to a narrower set of people: those 65 and older, people 18-64 with underlying conditions that put them at higher risk of severe disease, and healthcare workers and other front-line workers at greater risk of infection. Separately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is also expected to weigh in on Pfizer’s booster request.

Fauci on Sunday told ABC’s “This Week” that President Joe Biden aimed to have booster shots ready as soon as this week, pending FDA approval, because “we wanted to be ready. These are the kind of things that when you make a decision, you don’t snap your finger and it gets rolled out the next day.” He added that “when the FDA makes their final determination and very soon thereafter this coming week, you’re going to see the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that advises the CDC to perhaps even fine-tune that, so it can be implemented expeditiously.” Fauci added that FDA decisions on booster shots for people inoculated with Moderna’s or Johnson & Johnson
‘s Covid-19 vaccines are a few weeks away. As of Sunday, nearly 181.4 million Americans have been fully vaccinated, and more than 2.1 million people have received a booster shot since Aug. 13, according to the CDC.

• Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the Food and Drug Administration’s decision on Covid-19 vaccines for children under 12 will “certainly” come this fall. “What we’re going to almost certainly see is some time in the next few weeks as we get into October, we’ll be able to see the vaccines for children get enough data to be presented for safety and immunogenicity,” he told ABC’s “This Week.” Rather than specify a week, he said: “Some time in the mid-to-late fall, we will be seeing enough data from the children from 11 down to 5 to be able to make a decision to vaccinate them.” He said the decision on Pfizer-BioNTech will come first, followed by Moderna a few weeks later, “maybe into the end of October, the beginning of November.” Thousands of children have tested positive for coronavirus since the school year began last month.

• Vaccine mandates for domestic airline passengers are “still on the table,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. When Fauci was asked whether the Biden administration is considering requiring airline passengers to be vaccinated on domestic flights, he said, “Everything is on the table. We consider these things literally on a daily basis. … Suffice it to say, it’s still on the table right now.” The Transportation Security Administration requires that passengers and employees on airline flights and public transportation wear masks through Jan. 18. Mask mandates have led to thousands of confrontations between passengers who refuse to wear masks and flight attendants asked to enforce the rule. The Federal Aviation Administration said 74% of the 3,889 reports of unruly passengers since Jan. 1 involved refusals to comply with federal mask mandates, and has imposed fines of more than $1 million in civil penalties. FAA fines for passengers who refuse to wear masks have recently doubled.

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