CDC panel endorses third Pfizer doses for millions

A key Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group voted Thursday to recommend distributing Pfizer and BioNTech‘s Covid-19 booster shots to older Americans, nursing home residents and other vulnerable Americans, clearing the way for the agency to give the final OK as early as this evening.

The agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices unanimously endorsed giving third Pfizer shots to people 65 and older and nursing home residents in the first of four votes. The panel also recommended third shots for adults age 18 to 64 with underlying conditions. They rejected a proposal to give boosters to adults who are more frequently exposed to the virus – including nursing home staff, people who live or work in prisons and homeless shelters, front-line health employees, unpaid caregivers and other essential workers.

Many of these groups were among the first to get the initial shots in December and January.

The vote is seen as mostly a win for President Joe Biden, whose administration has said it wants to give booster shots to all eligible Americans 16 and older as early as this week. While the CDC panel’s recommendation doesn’t give the Biden administration everything it wanted, boosters will still be on the way for millions of Americans.

The endorsement comes a day after the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization to administer third Pfizer shots to many Americans six months after they complete their first two doses. While the CDC’s panel’s recommendation isn’t binding, Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is expected to accept the panel’s endorsement shortly.

Walensky addressed the committee Thursday before the vote, thanking them for their work and laying out what’s at stake.

“These data are not perfect, yet collectively they form a picture for us, and they are what we have in this moment to make a decision about the next stage in this pandemic,” she said.

Prior to the vote, some committee members said they worried that widely offering boosters could interfere with efforts to get the shots to the unvaccinated or potentially reduce confidence in the vaccines’ effectiveness. Others were frustrated that only Pfizer recipients would be eligible to get the shots, leaving out millions of Americans who got the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

The vote came at the end of a two-day meeting, where CDC advisors listened to several presentations on data to support the wide distribution of booster shots, including one presentation from a Pfizer executive who displayed data that showed a third shot appears to be safe and boost antibody levels in recipients.

During one presentation Thursday, CDC official Dr. Sara Oliver presented observational studies from Israel, where officials began inoculating the nation’s population ahead of many other countries…