In August, the CDC recommended that immunocompromised individuals who had been initially vaccinated with either the Pfizer or the Moderna mRNA vaccine — but not Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine — receive a third dose of an mRNA vaccine. That extra dose was not considered a booster, but rather a part of their primary vaccination series.
The new booster dose can be any of the available vaccines, including the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, according to the CDC.
The fourth dose aims to combat waning immunity, while serving the same purpose as a booster dose given to people without immune deficiencies six months after they were initially vaccinated.
“We know that six months after you reached a good level of protection, your protection has waned a and we need to boost that,” Dr Dorry Segev, professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University, was quoted as saying.
“That’s for people with normal immune systems and people who are immunocompromised.”
However, not every immunocompromised American will need a fourth shot, the report said.
“Out of the 11 million immunocompromised people in this country, some of them were fine with two doses,” Segev said. “Some of them were not fine with three doses. Some of them do need a fourth dose.”
Source: IANS
