The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today authorized Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna's COVID-19 booster shots for all adults. Not long after, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) advisory panel unanimously endorsed that decision.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky must give her sign-off before the shots will be officially available to all adults, a decision that could come any minute. If Walensky gives the greenlight—which is likely—the shots will be offered to anyone who got their second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines at least six months ago, or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot at least two months ago.
If you’re getting deja vu reading this newsletter, you’re not alone. The FDA authorized Pfizer-BioNTech’s booster for certain vulnerable populations in September and did the same for Moderna’s shot the following month; the agency also authorized boosters for all Johnson & Johnson recipients in October. So why are regulators now expanding authorization to all adults, just a month or two after greenlighting the shots for only select groups?
Vaccine makers have argued that vaccine-based immunity wanes over time, making people more vulnerable to breakthrough infections. A booster dose, they say, brings protection back up to roughly initial levels, hopefully preventing individual illnesses and tamping down the virus’ spread through communities.
Some experts still don’t think healthy, younger adults need booster shots. But with COVID-19 cases once again rising in the U.S., the FDA concluded that the benefits of universal booster shots outweighed their risks, which include very rare side effects. Plus, as my colleague Alice Park notes in her latest story, booster shot eligibility has worked on the honor system all along, so they were effectively already available to any adult who wanted one.
The FDA’s authorization and the CDC advisors' recommendation brings that policy very close to official approval.
More than 256 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 12 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 5.1 million people have died. On Nov. 18, there were 601,504 new cases and 7,741 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 5 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 47.5 million coronavirus cases as of 12 a.m. E.T. today. More than 768,600 people have died. On Nov. 18, there were 109,578 new cases and 1,262 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Nov. 19, 12 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Dr. Anthony Fauci warned yesterday that more vaccinated people are ending up in the hospital with COVID-19, a statement that supports the FDA’s decision to expand booster authorization. Fauci stressed that it is still rare for fully vaccinated people to get severely ill, and that most hospitalizations are among the unprotected. But particularly for older adults and those with underlying health conditions, vaccine-based immunity seems to be waning enough for some infections to become serious. The CDC did not say how many breakthrough cases have led to hospitalization when asked by NBC News, but its director urged eligible Americans to get their booster shots.
A new study is reviving the idea that the virus that causes COVID-19 first emerged in a food market in Wuhan, China. That theory—the leading one in the early days of the pandemic—doesn’t have universal support; some scientists believe the virus began infecting humans before cases were connected to the market, while others think it may have escaped from a laboratory. But the new study, led by a researcher from the University of Arizona, asserts that the man believed to be the first COVID-19 patient actually began suffering symptoms later than doctors thought. That would make a female seafood merchant from the wet market the first known case, lending support to the idea that the virus originated there.
AstraZeneca claims to have developed an antibody treatment that can stop a COVID-19 infection before it starts. The company says its injectable antibody cocktail reduces the risk of symptomatic disease by more than 80% when taken preventatively. That makes it a promising option for people who do not respond well to standard vaccination, including those with compromised immune systems. AstraZeneca has already submitted data to regulators in the U.S. and U.K. and plans to file for authorization in the European Union soon.
Austria plans to require vaccination for all adults, making it the first Western democracy to adopt such a sweeping mandate, the New York Times reports . The policy will take effect on Feb. 1, 2022. “For a long time—maybe too long—I and others assumed that it must be possible to convince people in Austria to voluntarily get vaccinated,” Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said today. “We therefore have reached a very difficult decision to introduce a national vaccine mandate.” The decision, announced alongside news of a nationwide lockdown, comes at a time when Austria has among the highest infection rates in Europe, with more than 15,000 new cases yesterday alone.
There’s yet another reason for pregnant people to get vaccinated: COVID-19 infection increases the risk of stillbirth, according to CDC data published today. Stillbirth is overall rare: out of more than 1.2 million deliveries tracked by the CDC from March 2020 to September 2021, about 8,000 resulted in stillbirth. But mothers who had COVID-19 at the time of delivery were almost twice as likely to experience it, compared to mothers who were not infected when they gave birth, the CDC found.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jamie Ducharme and edited by Angela Haupt.
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