Former US surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, questioned on Monday the current guidance from the Biden administration on obtaining Covid-19 vaccines for the Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines – which have been tested and authorized as a two-dose regimen every few weeks – to offer at least some immediate protection to more Americans.
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Next, surgeon general Jerome Adams speaks to the media outside the White House on December 21, 2020 in Washington, DC
“Good protection for many (with 1 injection) is better than optimal protection for some. 2,000 people a day die because they can’t get a first # covid19 injection – not because they can’t get a second one,” Adams wrote in a Twitter topic. In another tweet, Adams wrote: “Distribute all doses NOW and start production!”
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Adams included a link to an article published by The Washington Post on Monday, in which Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to the Biden government, said the United States should maintain a dose two-dose regimen for Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
Fauci told the newspaper that there were “risks on both sides” of switching to a single dose or maintaining both.
“We are telling people [two shots] is what you should do … and then we say, ‘Oops, we changed our minds’? “said the disease specialist.” I think it would be a messaging challenge, to say the least. “
On Tuesday, Adams sought to clarify his comments.
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“I’m not saying it is [100 emoji] the right way to go. I am saying that there is enough data / evidence to suggest that there is [100 emoji] the wrong way to go – and with 2,000 (unvaccinated) people dying each day, it’s worth giving states the flexibility to experiment, ” tweeted.
Fauci rejected Adams’ comments on Wednesday, telling CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront” that, while respecting Adams, “I think he’s wrong about that,” in light of the virus variants that reduce the vaccine’s effectiveness.
“If you look at the level of antibodies after the second dose, it’s 10 times higher,” said Fauci, using the Pfizer vaccine as an example. “So, when you’re dealing with variants that slightly decrease, sometimes five times, the effectiveness of these vaccine-induced antibodies, you can reduce it to … well within the protection range because you have a lot of cushioning.”
Meanwhile, on receiving just one dose, Fauci continued, “You don’t know how durable it is, if it will just disappear and fall further within a period of a month or more. But, most importantly, you are very tenuous. – good enough to offer protection, but if you decrease it by five times, you’re off the protection graph. So it’s really very risky when you’re trying to deal with variants that we know exist. ”
Amid the low supply of vaccine, several experts have advocated postponing the second dose in favor of giving the first dose to more people, and some research has suggested a high degree of temporary protection with just one dose. However, the Food and Drug Administration and top American officials have backed off, saying it is unclear how long this protection will last and arguing the need to follow evidence from clinical trials.
During a discussion of vaccines on Monday at the meeting of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, experts said that two doses better protect people against coronavirus variants than a single dose. US health officials are concerned that the spread of more infectious variants could hurt the country in its struggle to control the pandemic.
Although the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines have been tested as a two-dose regimen, the UK has postponed second doses to get more first doses to more people more quickly.
Over the weekend, the FDA authorized Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine. The J&J vaccine is also being tested as a two-dose vaccine.
This story has been updated with additional comments from Dr. Anthony Fauci.
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