A New York City Fire Department Bureau of Emergency Medical Services (FDNY EMS) employee receives a COVID-19 Moderna vaccine amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, USA, December 23, 2020.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters
The head of the federal government’s Covid-19 vaccine program said on Sunday that health officials are investigating the idea of giving a large group of Americans half doses of one vaccine to accelerate the rollout.
Moncef Slaoui, the chief of Operation Warp Speed, said on CBS ‘”Face the Nation” that one way to speed up immunizations against Covid-19 was by giving some individuals two half-volume doses of the Moderna vaccine.
“We know that for the Moderna vaccine that gives half the dose to people between the ages of 18 and 55 – two doses, half the dose, which means exactly that we are meeting the goal of immunizing double the number of people with the doses we have – we know it elicits an identical immune response to the 100 microgram dose, ”said Slaoui.
“And that’s why we’re in talks with Moderna and with the FDA – of course it will ultimately be a decision of the FDA – to speed up injecting half the volume,” he added.
Moncef Slaoui, a former GlaxoSmithKline executive, speaks with President Donald J. Trump at a vaccine development event at the Rose Garden in the White House on Friday, May 15, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images
The comments came in response to a question as to why the US was not adopting the strategy of administering all available doses of vaccines now, even though the approved vaccines require a second round of injections to be fully effective. The UK has opted for this approach, hoping that the continuation of production will allow the second shots to be given in the future.
Slaoui said he thought it would be a mistake to make a decision that was not supported by the research data. White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, made similar comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier Sunday, saying the strategy “goes against science” and would not solve the problems facing the US rollout.
“The idea of stretching it out so you can get more people is if you don’t have enough vaccine and there are a lot of people waiting in line to get a vaccine,” Fauci said. “That’s not our problem right now. We have vaccine. We have to get it into people’s arms. It’s really the right solution to the wrong problem.”
The FDA and Moderna did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The argument about different vaccination approaches comes because the introduction of the vaccine in the US has failed to meet the objectives of Operation Warp Speed and the pandemic continues to devastate the country. President Donald Trump has blamed states for the slow rollout, as the number of vaccinations administered falls short of the number shipped and delivered.
Health officials wanted to inject 20 million Americans with a vaccine by the end of the year. However, as of January 2, only about 4.2 million shots had been received, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to John Hopkins University, the latest seven-day average for new cases of the coronavirus in the US is 205,093. That figure is up 8% from week to week, although testing and reporting has been generally inconsistent during holiday seasons. According to Johns Hopkins, the country also dies an average of more than 2,600 a day from the virus.