The approval from the Food and Drug Administration, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation, permits individuals who have received both doses of the COVID vaccine to become eligible to receive a booster shot.
Nethealthcovid19.org states the CDC, “recommends that adults in certain groups who have received two doses of the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine can receive a booster dose that can help strengthen protection against severe disease in populations whose immunity may have started to wane and who are at high-risk of exposure to COVID-19 or complications from severe disease.”
Graphic By Chris Swann
The CDC has also approved the mix and match of doses. According to The New York Times, “Early studies have shown the mix-and-match strategy not only is safe and effective, but that mixing vaccines also can sometimes create a broader, more potent response than getting multiple doses of a single vaccine.”
The benefit of receiving the booster shot includes the increased number of antibodies. Terrence Ates, public information officer for the Northeast Texas Public Health District, discusses the importance of the booster shot.
“Available data right now show that all three of the COVID-19 vaccines approved or authorized in the United States continue to be highly effective in reducing risk of severe disease, hospitalization, and death, even against the widely circulating Delta variant,” Ates said. “Vaccination remains the best way to protect yourself and reduce the spread of the virus and help prevent new variants from emerging.”
Some individuals may face mild symptoms that are similar to the flu from receiving the booster shot Ates explains. These symptoms include, soreness at the site of injection, fever and overall fatigue.
Ates explains in detail that vaccines do not cause COVID.
“It is important to state that COVID vaccines do not cause COVID. The vaccines are inactive forms of the virus so that a person’s immune system will manufacture antibodies that will respond if the person is actually exposed to an active form of the virus,” Ates said.
For more information regarding booster doses, visit nethealthcovid19.org/vaccine-updates/.
