US To Recommend COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Shot For All 8 Months After 2nd Shot

A COVID-19 vaccine booster shot looks likely. US officials are expected to announce that they will recommend all Americans (regardless of age) receive a booster shot eight months after receiving their second dose of the vaccine.

Multiple media outlets — including CNN and the New York Times — report that federal officials are expected to make the announcement about the booster shoot, as early as this week. Administering those doses could begin in September, those reports say.

As you'll recall, health care workers and those at high risk (including nursing home patients) received the vaccine back in January, so they would be due for the booster shoot soon.

This plan appears to only affect those who got the vaccine with two does (Moderna or Pfizer). Officials have not made a decision regarding Johnson & Johnson's one-shot vaccine, but they're continuing to study the data. The overall plan would likely still need approval from the FDA.

Earlier this week, Pfizer filed plan with the FDA, which said research has found that a booster shot helped protect against newer variants of the highly contagious virus.

"Given the high levels of immune responses observed, a booster dose given within 6 to 12 months after the primary vaccination schedule may help maintain a high level of protection against COVID-19," Pfizer and BioNTech said in a statement.

To date, it's estimated that ore than 168 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against the virus. The delta variant of the virus, however, has been causing COVID-19 cases to surge across the country.