Fauci: US still planning booster shots after eight months, but ‘flexible’

President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said on Sunday the timeline of administering COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for fully-vaccinated Americans is “flexible” around the 8-month mark first suggested by U.S. officials.

“We’re still planning on eight months. That was the calculation we made. This rollout will start on the week of September the 20th. But as we’ve said all along, Chuck, in the original statement, that’s the plan that we have, but we are open to data as they come in,” Fauci told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet The Press.”

Fauci noted that the booster shot rollout was still pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in addition to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) advisory committee. 

The booster shot recommendation by U.S. health officials came in part from Israel’s decision to administer booster shots to its population after it became one of the first countries to reach high vaccinated levels.

On Friday, President Biden met with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to talk its vaccination program among other agenda items. Biden said on Friday that the two had already spoken about booster shots, and he raised the question of whether the timeline between the second and third COVID-19 doses should be decreased.

“The question raised is: Should it be shorter than eight months?  Should it be as little as five months?  And that’s being discussed,” Biden said. 

Fauci said that officials were planning on keeping the timeline as is but noted it could be amended if more data was available.

“We’re not changing it, but we are very open to new data as it comes in. We’re going to be very flexible about it,” Fauci said on Sunday.