US booster drive kicks off amid eligibility confusion

The US launched a campaign to offer boosters of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine to millions of Americans on Friday even as federal health officials stressed the real problem remains getting first shots to the unvaccinated.

Washington:

“We will not boost our way out of this pandemic,” warned CDC director Rochelle Walensky, even though she took the rare step of overruling the advice of her own expert panel to make more people eligible for the booster. The vast majority of Covid cases and hospitalisations are among the unvaccinated, she noted.

State health officials on Friday rushed to roll out campaigns to provide booster shots for millions of vulnerable people who got the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and to help a confused public understand who qualifies for the extra shots. Among their challenges: making sure that recipients of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines know that they are not yet eligible for boosters; reaching isolated elderly people; and informing younger adults with medical conditions or jobs that place them at higher risk that they might be eligible under the broad federal rules.