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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released three studies Wednesday that federal officials say provide evidence. Booster shots of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines will be needed. in the coming months.

But some experts said the new research doesn’t support the decision to recommend booster shots for all Americans.

Taken together, studies show that while vaccines are highly effective against hospitalizations and deaths, the shield they provide against virus transmission has weakened over the past few months.

Concordance with finding early data from seven statesThe report, collected by The New York Times this week, suggested an increase in breakthrough infections and a smaller increase in hospitalizations among those vaccinated as the Delta variant spread in July.

Experts said the decrease in efficacy against infection could be due to reduced vaccine immunity, delay in measures such as wearing masks, or the rise of the highly contagious Delta variant, or a combination of the three.

General surgeon Dr. “We are concerned that this pattern of decline that we are seeing will continue over the coming months and that this could lead to reduced protection against serious illness, hospitalizations and death,” Vivek Murthy said in a White House news briefing. Wednesday.

Citing the data, federal health officials devised a plan for Americans who received the two vaccines to have booster vaccines starting September 20, eight months after receiving their second dose.

Additional doses may also be required in people who have the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. However, officials said that this vaccine was not released until March 2021 and that a plan to provide supplements will be made after reviewing new data expected in the next few weeks.

Some scientists were skeptical of the administration’s new initiative.

D., an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center and a former pandemic counselor to management. “These data support the administration of additional doses of vaccine to highly immunocompromised individuals and nursing home residents, not the general population,” said Céline Gounder.

Boosters said they would only be guaranteed if vaccines failed to prevent hospitalizations with Covid-19.

Dr. “Feeling sick as a dog and lying in bed but not being in the hospital with severe Covid is not a good enough reason for a supportive shooting campaign,” Gounder said. “We will be better protected by vaccinating the unvaccinated here and around the world.”

It’s unclear whether a third dose will help people who don’t produce a strong immune response to the first two doses, said epidemiologist Bill Hanage of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

He warned that advice on boosters could also undermine confidence in vaccines: “A third shot will raise skepticism among people who have not yet received a dose that the vaccines helped them with.”

Together, new studies show that overall, vaccines have an efficacy of roughly 55 percent against all infections, 80 percent against symptomatic infection, and 90 percent or higher against hospitalization, said Ellie Murray, an epidemiologist at Boston University.

Dr. “These numbers are actually very good,” Murray said. “The only group where this data would suggest boosters for me are those who are immunocompromised.”

The marked reduction in vaccine efficacy against infection may instead have been due to increased exposure to the highly contagious Delta variant during a period of unrestricted social interactions, he added: “This seems like a real possibility to me, because many of those vaccinated early have a desire to see friends and family and get back to normal.”

Dr. Murray said a booster vaccine will undoubtedly boost immunity in an individual, but the added benefit may be minimal and easily achieved by wearing masks or avoiding closed meals and crowded bars.

Dr. Murray and other experts said the administration’s emphasis on vaccines undermines the importance of increasing testing capacity and taking other measures into people’s lives in comfortable and sustainable ways.

“That’s one reason why I think the administration’s focus on vaccines is so detrimental to morale,” he added. “We probably won’t be back to normal anytime soon.”

Before people start taking supplements, the Food and Drug Administration must first approve the third dose of vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, and an advisory board from the CDC should review the evidence and make recommendations.

One of the new CDC studies analyzed the effectiveness of the vaccines among approximately 4,000 nursing home residents between March 1 and May 9 before the Delta variant emerged, and among approximately 15,000 nursing home residents between June 21 and August 1, when the variant dominated new infections. in the country.

The effectiveness of vaccines in preventing infections fell from about 75 percent to 53 percent between these dates, study found. It did not evaluate the protection of vaccines against serious diseases.

Dr. Murray said nursing homes should only report the number of vaccinated residents after June 6, which “makes comparisons over time very difficult”. “It’s entirely possible that the vaccine efficacy reported here has not actually decreased over time.”

Dr. Gounder said the drop in activity could also be due to the spread of the Delta variant.

“It makes sense to give vaccinated nursing home residents an extra dose of the vaccine, but what will have a greater impact in protecting nursing home residents is to vaccinate their caregivers,” he said. Many paramedics in long-term care facilities remain unvaccinated.

a second study Evaluated data from New York State from May 3 to July 25, represents more than 80 percent of new cases when the Delta variant grows. The study found that during this time, the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing cases in adults dropped from 91.7 percent to 79.8 percent. But vaccines continued to be equally effective at preventing hospitalizations.

In those weeks, New York recorded 9,675 breakthrough infections (about 20 percent of total cases in the state) and 1,271 hospitalizations for vaccinated people, accounting for 15 percent of all Covid-19 hospitalizations.

Although fully vaccinated people of all ages are infected with the virus, vaccine efficacy declined most sharply, from 90.6 percent to 74.6 percent, with people aged 18 to 49 — generally the ones most likely to take the least precautions and socialize.

Data from Israel suggested that immunity to infection was reduced in vaccinated adults aged 65 and over. But in the New York data, the efficacy of vaccines in this group remained virtually unchanged.

Adults aged 65 and over were more likely to be hospitalized than other age groups, regardless of immunization status. However, the vaccines did not show a decrease in efficacy against hospitalizations in any age group.

CDC’s third study showed 90 percent effectiveness against hospitalizations in the countryDr. “Which is excellent,” Gounder said.

Vaccines were less protective against hospitalization in immunocompromised persons. Dr. “But not all immunocompromised people will respond to an additional dose of vaccine,” said Gounder.

He added that everyone around them should be vaccinated and continue to wear masks to protect these vulnerable individuals.

Vaccines may appear to be less effective than they were in the trials that led to their authorization, as they were conducted prior to the emergence of the Delta variant.

Statistically, vaccines may lose their relative effectiveness as more unvaccinated people become infected, recover, and acquire natural immunity. And scientists have always expected that as more people are vaccinated, the proportion of vaccinated people among those infected will increase.

Dr. Gounder said that if the goal is to prevent infection, it would be wiser to develop a nasal spray vaccine supplement that is better at inducing immunity in the nose and throat, where the virus enters the body.