Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams on Monday questioned the Biden government’s current lead on getting both Covid-19 vaccine shots for the Modern and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines – which have been tested and authorized as a two-dose regimen which are spaced a few weeks apart. – to provide at least immediate more protection to more Americans.
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Then Surgeon General Jerome Adams speaks to the media outside the White House on December 21, 2020 in Washington, DC
“Good protection for many (w / 1 shot) is better than good protection for some. 2000 people die every day because they can not get a 1st # covid19 shot – not because they can not get a 2nd , “Adams het in a Twitter thread. In another tweet, Adams writes, “Print all doses NOW and lean into production!”
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Adams contains a link to an article published by The Washington Post on Monday, in which dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to the Biden government, said the US should stick to a two-dose. for Pfizer / BioNTech and Modern vaccines.
Fauci told the newspaper there were ‘risks on both sides’ of switching to a single dose or sticking to it.
‘We tell people [two shots] is what you have to do … and then we say, ‘Oops, we’ve changed our minds’? said the top expert. ‘I think it’s going to be a message challenge, to say the least.’
Adams on Tuesday tried to clarify his comments.
Video: FDA says Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine meets emergency use requirements (CNN)
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‘I’m not saying it is [100 emoji] the right way to go. I say there is enough data / evidence to indicate that it is not [100 emoji] the wrong way to go and with 2,000 people (not vaccinated) dying every day, it’s worth giving states the flexibility to try it, tweeted.
Fauci retracted Adams’ comments on Wednesday, telling CNN’s Erin Burnett on ‘OutFront’ that although he respects Adams, ‘I think he’s wrong about this’, given the variants of the virus affecting the vaccine’s effectiveness reduce.
“If you look at the level of antibodies after the second dose, it’s ten times higher,” Fauci said, using the Pfizer vaccine as an example. “So if you’re dealing with variants that slightly reduce the effectiveness of the antibody-induced antibodies, sometimes fivefold, you can bring it to … within the scope of protection, because you have a lot of pillows.”
Meanwhile, Fauci continued, by receiving just one dose, “you do not know how durable it is, or it will only go down in a period of about a month. But importantly, you are on a soft level – “Good enough to do protection, but if you reduce it fivefold, you’ll fall off the protection table, so it’s really risky to try to deal with variants that we know are there.
Amid the low vaccine supply, a number of experts have advocated postponing second doses in order to get more people first, and some research has suggested that a high degree of temporary protection occurs at just one dose. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and top U.S. officials have pushed back, saying it is unclear how long the protection will last, arguing that it is necessary to stick to the evidence from clinical trials.
During a discussion on vaccines Monday in the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, experts said that two doses protect people better against coronavirus variants than a single dose. U.S. health officials are concerned that the spread of more contagious variants could put the country back in its fight to bring the pandemic under control.
Although the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines have been tested as a two-dose regimen, the UK has moved to postponing second doses to get more doses to more people faster.
The FDA approved the Covid-19 vaccine for Johnson & Johnson over the weekend. The J&J vaccine is currently also being tested as a two-dose vaccine.
This story has been updated with additional comments from dr. Anthony Fauci.
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