Anthony Fauci said on Sunday that there is no need for Americans to get a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot, according to current data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Jake Tapper asked the nation’s leading infectious diseases expert if booster shots could theoretically help vulnerable people, referring to a Reuters report that said Israel would start offering a third Pfizer shot to adults it considered vulnerable.
“Well, certainly they theoretically could. What the CDC and the FDA were saying, Jake, is that right now, given the data and the information we have, we do not need to give people a third shot, a boost superimposed upon the two doses you get with the mRNA and the one dose you get with [Johnson & Johnson],” Fauci said.
However, Fauci said that research is currently being conducted to determine if this guidance will change. He cautioned that the current guidance did not imply it would not be changed later.
“But that doesn’t mean we stop. … I mean, there are studies being done now, ongoing as we speak, about looking at the feasibility about if and when we should be boosting people. So this isn’t something that we say, ‘No, we don’t need a boost right now. The story’s ended forever,’” Fauci said.
“No, there’s a lot of work going on to examine this in real time to see if we might need a boost, but right now, given the data that the CDC and the FDA has, they don’t feel that we need to tell people right now you need to be boosted,” Fauci added.
Tapper asked, “I wonder, are you worried at all that if the CDC and FDA change their recommendations and boosters do become recommended in a few months, that some Americans will see this as, and some demagogues in the media and politics will portray this as, another flip-flop and it will undercut trust in the FDA and CDC?”
Fauci acknowledged that Tapper raised a valid point but explained that the CDC and FDA were working off of current data.
“Yeah. Well, Jake, I mean, you have a very good point there. Inevitably something like that will happen,” Fauci said. “I think what people need to understand, and it’s really important to understand that, that when you have an organization like the CDC and the FDA that are responsible for the regulatory components of what we do as well as the public health, when they make a formal recommendation, it has to be based on data that’s evidence that proves we need to go in this direction.”
Fauci outlined that while “well-meaning companies” and physicians may make their own recommendations, those are different from the formal recommendations of the CDC and FDA.
“If you’re looking at formal recommendations from organizations, it’s always based on data, and as we’ve said so many times, Jake, data evolves. You get more information as the time goes by. So when you get to the point where you have enough information to make a firm recommendation, that is not flip-flopping. That is making recommendations as the data evolves,” Fauci added.