Updated COVID Booster Guidelines from CDC

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The CDC has updated their COVID Booster recommendations, and is now recommending third doses of the COVID vaccine to certain individuals.

According to the CDC, people who are eligible for a third dose are:

  • People in active cancer treatment; those who have received organ transplants and are taking immunosuppressive therapy;

  • People who have received CAR-T cell or blood stem cell transplants;

  • People who suffer from moderate or severe primary immunodeficiency (such as those with DiGeorge or Wiskott-Aldrich syndromes);

  • People with advanced, untreated, or unknown status HIV infection;

  • People taking 20 milligrams or more of prednisone or similar corticosteroid every day, alkylating agents, antimetabolites, transplant-related immunosuppressive drugs, severely immunosuppressive cancer chemotherapeutic agents, TNF blockers, and other biologic agents that are immunosuppressive or immunomodulatory.

Patients should receive a third dose no earlier than 28 days from the completion of the second dose in the series. The patient should, whenever possible, receive the same brand of vaccine, at the standard dose. The Booster policy includes ages 12 and up.

The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is not included in the Booster regimen at this time; neither second dose efficacy or timing have been fully studied. People requesting Booster injections that previously received the J & J immunization will need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

The Floyd County Health Department will start giving Booster doses on 16 August 2021 for walk-in patients, and they also will schedule them for the Tuesday clinic and accept them at Pop-ups.

The CDC estimates about 3% of the population fits the above criteria; this would suggest a need to provide about 2300 additional vaccine doses to the citizens of Floyd County.

The City of New Albany still encourages everyone eligible to get the primary series of COVID immunizations, especially due to the Delta variant.

The CDC and the FDA have not issued guidelines for a general public Booster  program, and currently, routine use of Booster doses in this population is not recommended.