Folks stand in line on the mass vaccination website at San Francisco’s Moscone Conference Middle that opened at present for healthcare employees and other people over 65 on February 5, 2021 in San Francisco, California.
Amy Osborne | AFP | Getty Pictures
The San Francisco Division of Public Well being and Zuckerberg San Francisco Normal Hospital stated Tuesday they’re permitting sufferers who acquired Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine to get a second shot produced by both Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna.
J&J recipients could make a particular request to get a “supplemental dose” of an mRNA vaccine, metropolis well being officers stated in an announcement to CNBC, declining to name the second pictures “boosters.” J&J’s vaccine requires just one dose and recipients are thought-about totally vaccinated two weeks after receiving the shot.
On a name with reporters later Tuesday, San Francisco well being officers stated they’re permitting sufferers to get the additional pictures as a result of excessive variety of requests they had been receiving from residents. They maintained that J&J’s vaccine is extremely efficient towards the virus and its variants.
“We now have gotten requests primarily based on sufferers speaking to their physicians, and that is why we’re permitting the lodging,” stated Naveena Bobba, deputy director of well being on the San Francisco Division of Public Well being.
Well being officers stated they don’t suggest booster pictures right now, aligning with steering from the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
“This transfer doesn’t characterize a change in coverage for SFDPH,” the general public well being division stated in an announcement. “We proceed to align with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention steering and don’t suggest a booster shot right now. We’ll proceed to overview any new knowledge and modify our steering, if crucial.”
The CDC doesn’t at the moment suggest Individuals combine Covid pictures in most circumstances, and federal well being officers say booster doses of the vaccines usually are not wanted right now.
The announcement from San Francisco well being officers comes as some Individuals say they’re discovering methods to get extra doses of the Covid vaccines — with some even going so far as receiving the additional pictures from completely different firms — attributable to considerations concerning the extremely contagious delta variant.
Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown College, instructed CNBC final month that she acquired a booster shot of Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine in late June, two months after she bought J&J’s single dose. She stated she was involved about her stage of safety towards delta after research urged a single dose of a Covid vaccine wasn’t sufficient.
Since Rasmussen acquired her booster shot, a brand new examine has urged the J&J vaccine is way much less efficient towards the delta and lambda variants than towards the unique virus. The researchers who led the examine, which has not but been peer-reviewed, now say they hope J&J recipients will finally obtain a booster shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
The brand new analysis is at odds with a examine from J&J, which discovered the shot is efficient towards delta, particularly towards extreme illness and hospitalization, even eight months after inoculation. It’s more likely to reignite the controversy of blending and matching pictures within the U.S. because the extremely contagious delta variant continues to unfold throughout the U.S.
J&J did not instantly reply to a request for touch upon the announcement from the San Francisco Division of Public Well being.