Will Utah Bring Back Mass COVID-19 Vaccination Sites For Booster Injections?

Remember Utah massive COVID-19 vaccination sites? They can return to the state to deliver booster injections against the deadly virus.

Last month, President Joe Biden announced that Americans should get booster shots eight months after their second dose of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine as additional protection against the highly contagious and possibly more virulent delta variant of the virus.

The White House plan, which could possibly include a second injection of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, called for the booster shots to begin the week of September 20 for residents and staff at long-term care facilities as well as health workers who were the first to receive coronavirus vaccines rolled out late last year.

But the administration is still awaiting a full review and approval of the booster injections from the Federal Food and Drug Administration as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, possibly delaying the start date as the debate continues as to whether additional doses should be administered to the general public.

Already, third injections are available in Utah and other states for those who are moderately to severely immunocompromised due to organ transplants and treatment for cancer or HIV. The Utah Department of Health does not track how many of these patients received an additional dose of the vaccine, but expects to track widely available booster doses.

Rich Lakin, director of immunizations for the state health department, said preparations were underway to have the Utahns vaccinated once the federal government gives the green light. He said the state was working with local health departments, contractors, pharmacies, health systems and others to be ready.

“It’s hard to plan, knowing that we don’t know what the exact date is,” Lakin said, although he believes the state can be configured to start offering booster shots whenever the approval is coming. “We are flexible. It doesn’t matter if it starts on September 20 or months later.

Most Utahns would be eight months away from their second injection of COVID-19 from late November to January, he said, so that’s when mass vaccination clinics would likely open again along the Wasatch front. There won’t be as many as last winter, when The Utahns have blocked phone lines and websites to make appointments for vaccines.

Then, demand exceeded supply, so the state initially limited access to specific groups considered to be more vulnerable to the virus, including teachers and the elderly. Now anyone 12 and older can get the vaccine in some 1,300 locations across the state, including their doctor’s office and pop-up clinics in supermarket parking lots.

Lakin said booster shots should also be easy to get.

“There should be no limit to the supply,” he said, noting that vaccine suppliers now order vaccines directly from the state, which receives doses from the federal government. And although providers have been advised that the third doses for now are only for the immunocompromised, Lakin said some Utahns are unwilling to wait.

“We have reports of people trying to get the third dose. Some people just give in and some people get tested, ”he said. “Nothing stops them, other than ACIP (the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices) did not make the recommendation.”

Utah, like many states, has struggled to get enough residents vaccinated against the virus, meaning it’s been two weeks or more since their last dose to slow the spread of the delta variant that triggered an increase cases, hospitalizations and deaths across the country.

As of Friday, less than half of all Utahns were fully immunized while the state’s health department reported 1,635 new cases and six additional deaths from COVID-19. A day earlier, Utah recorded its second death among young people of the virus, an unvaccinated teenage girl from Salt Lake County who was hospitalized at the time of her death.

Han Kim, professor of public health at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, is unsure whether booster shots are needed.

“I’m still not entirely convinced that we need boosters, at least in healthy populations,” Kim said, calling new data from Israel on the effectiveness of COVID-19 booster shots as ” troubled at best “, even though it was deemed” dramatic “. week by Dr Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to Biden.

Fauci told a White House COVID-19 response team briefing on Thursday that 12 days or more after third dose of Pfizer vaccine given to some 1.1 million 60-year-old Israelis and over this summer, “there was a more than ten-fold decrease in relative risk. both confirmed infection and severe illness.

But the New York Times reported on Friday that White House urged to scale back plans for COVID-19 booster injections to give federal health agencies more time to review data, including submissions from drug companies.

Utah Senator Mitt Romney asked faster action on coronavirus booster shots. The Utah Republican expressed frustration at a US Senate hearing in July that they were not yet available in the US, saying: “There are quite a few of us lining up to get a recall “.

Others, including Kim, have raised concerns about the availability of booster doses in wealthier countries as many high-risk populations around the world lack adequate access to coronavirus vaccines. The World Health Organization called last month for a moratorium on booster doses until the end of September.

Kim said given the questions about the latest data as well as “the ethical and moral issues with vaccine distribution, this is incredibly problematic.” For those who live in long-term care facilities, those who are immunocompromised and perhaps those who are older, this might make sense. For the rest, not that much.

Instead of preparing for booster shots, the professor said Utah should try to get more people vaccinated.

“I think it’s much more important to focus on immunizing those who haven’t received it yet,” Kim said. “It will do a lot more to reduce numbers than boosters.”

Utah’s latest COVID-19 numbers

The 1,635 new coronavirus cases reported on Friday included 453 school-aged children: 163 aged 5 to 10; 122 aged 11 to 13 and 168 aged 14 to 18.

The seven-day moving average for positive tests is 1,365 per day, with 13,749 people tested and 20,473 tests administered in the state since Thursday. This places the seven-day moving average for the percent test positivity at 10.3% when all results are included and at 14.01% when multiple tests performed by an individual are excluded.

The number of vaccines administered in the state has increased by 8,296 since Thursday.

Currently, 503 people in Utah are hospitalized with COVID-19. The death toll from the virus in the state has reached 2,658 with the six new deaths reported on Friday, all hospitalized at the time of their deaths. They are:

– A man from Utah County, between 65 and 84 years old

– A woman from Salt Lake County, between 65 and 84

– A woman from Wasatch County, between 65 and 84 years old

– A man from Duchesne County, between 65-84

– A man from Davis County, between 25 and 44 years old

– A woman from Salt Lake County, over 85