A worker from the New York City Fire Department Bureau of Emergency Medical Services (FDNY EMS) receives a COVID-19 Modern vaccine amid coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in New York City, New York, USA, in Manhattan. 23 December 2020.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters
The head of the federal government’s Covid-19 vaccine program said Sunday that health officials are investigating the idea of giving a large group of Americans half doses of one vaccine to accelerate the explosion.
Moncef Slaoui, head of Operation Warp Speed, said on CBS ‘”Face the Nation” that one way to speed up the vaccinations against Covid-19 is to give two doses of the Moderna vaccine to some people.
“We know that for the Moderna vaccine, half the dose is given to people between 18 and 55 years of age – two doses, half the dose, which means that we achieve exactly the goal of immunizing twice the number of people with the ‘doses we have – we know it causes an identical immune response to the 100 microgram dose,’ Slaoui said.
“And that’s why we’re in talks with Moderna and with the FDA – of course it will ultimately be a decision of the FDA – to inject half the volume,” he added.
Moncef Slaoui, a former manager of GlaxoSmithKline, speaks with President Donald J. Trump during a vaccine development event at the Rose Garden in the White House on Friday, May 15, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images
The remarks come in response to a question as to why the US did not use the strategy to administer all available doses of vaccines now, even though the approved vaccines require a second round of shots to be fully effective. The UK has adopted this approach, hoping that continued production will enable the second shots in the future.
Slaoui said he thought it would be a mistake to make a decision that is not supported by the trial data. White House health adviser Anthony Fauci made similar comments earlier on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, saying the strategy was “in conflict with science” and that it did not address the issues facing US implementation, can not correct.
“The idea of stretching it so you can get more people, that’s when you do not have enough vaccine and you have a lot of people standing in line to wait to get a vaccine,” Fauci said. . “It’s not our problem now. We have vaccine. We have to get it in people’s arms. It really is the right solution to the wrong problem.”
The FDA and Moderna did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The argument over different vaccination approaches comes because the deployment of the vaccine in the US could not achieve the objectives of Operation Warp Speed and the pandemic continues to devastate the country. President Donald Trump blamed the states for the slow rollout, as the number of vaccinations administered lags behind the number sent and delivered.
Health officials were aiming to inject 20 million Americans with a vaccine by the end of the year. However, only 4.2 million received shots on January 2, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to John Hopkins University, the latest seven-day average for new cases of coronavirus in the US is 205,093. The figure rose 8% week-on-week, although testing and reporting during holiday seasons were usually inconsistent. According to Johns Hopkins, the country also averages more than 2,600 deaths a day attributed to the virus.