We aren’t seeing sufficient evidence to recommend COVID booster shots: Doctor

Dr. Sejal Hathi Faculty at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health & host of “Civic Rx” podcast joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss the latest COVID-19 vaccine news.

Video Transcript

- Once again, as we saw last week, the World Health Organization really doubling down on the idea of pausing vaccine booster doses in developed nations to make sure that those that have not had their first round of vaccines can catch up. Once again, stressing the threat of vaccine-resistant variants popping up around the globe.

And for more on that discussion, I want to bring on a doctor here with us, Dr. Sejal Hathi, faculty at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and host of Civic RX podcast. Appreciate you coming on here to chat with us today, doctor. I mean, when we look at it, it has been interesting because it seems like a trade off between, you know, boosters and first doses. But there are a lot of scientific and medical questions now, I suppose, being raised around boosters. So how are you looking at that question?

DR. SEJAL HATHI: Yes, Zach, firstly, thank you very much for having me on. And I absolutely agree with the World Health Organization and its leader Dr. Tedros that it is frankly not only immoral, but also prolonging the pandemic for rich countries, including most notably, ours, to promote booster vaccines when so many countries are struggling to get even 5% of their populations vaccinated.

To give you the context here, only 0.3% of all vaccine doses have been administered in low income countries. And the who's goal was that every country reach at least 10% vaccine coverage by the end of this month, that is September. That is not at all going to happen at this current rate.

And everyone is talking about the Delta variant, but the reality is it's not the worst plausible variant that might yet emerge. Another, which combines the contagiousness of Delta with the severity and the immune evasiveness of, for instance, beta, the South African variant, could be far more dire.

And that likelihood of such a variant emerging multiplies each day that we allow the virus to replicate both here in the United States and around the world. So it's certainly a difficult discussion, but, of course, I think that we would get better bang for a buck if we were to allocate those vaccine doses to the unvaccinated rather than the already vaccinated.

- Yeah, it's an important point to make here as we watch those variants and continually hear concerns being raised by the medical community about that potential of seeing an even worse variant. But the other interesting thing that you flagged was this study out in The Lancet here about KIND of whether or not it's even necessary to have those boosters.

And just for context too, among the authors of that kind of review were the two FDA scientists who had quit over, reportedly over issues in terms of the speed at which some of these boosters were getting approved and the-- I guess, the politics behind President Biden really pushing for that to happen as well. So I mean, it would be pretty important to even dig into whether or not the research says that these boosters are necessary before we roll those out too. What's your take?

DR. SEJAL HATHI: Yes, so you're absolutely right, Zach. According to a viewpoint published in The Lancet this morning, 18 scientists globally, including those several at the WHO and the FDA, including two of the scientists you cited have come out strongly to say that there is no credible evidence for boosters for the general population.

And the fact is a study after study demonstrate that even as vaccines protection against infection dipped slightly, the most recent study released by the CDC this past week covering about a fourth of the US population showed a drop from 91% to 78% protection against infection, which is still quite strong. The efficacy of vaccines against serious illness, hospitalization, or death remains robust.

The unvaccinated are 4 and 1/2 times more likely to get infected, 10 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 11 times more likely to die. Vaccines were designed to prevent serious illness and death, not mild or asymptomatic infections. And so, in my view, to answer your questions. We are simply not seeing sufficient evidence to recommend booster shots for the vast majority of the US population. And that's likely why several scientists at the FDA are perplexed that perhaps politics might be taking precedence over the science.

- Yeah, and I mean that would seem to be a lot of kind of the same issues that we've heard from both sides of the political debate. At least, when it comes to this, it was really focusing on the data. You know, don't let politics get in the way, just look at the data. So I mean, if it's saying otherwise now around boosters, that's another thing.

The last question I'd have for you too, doctor, was just kind of around, I guess, the next step, which would be Pfizer moving forward potentially here to get authorized for kids ages 5 to 11 as soon as next month according to Reuters looking into that. I mean, when we look at that timeline, obviously, boosters are one discussion, but then kind of the first dose in kids, another discussion, especially around everyone going back to school. So how optimistic would you be around that timeline? And how important would it be in terms of boosting the community's defenses?

DR. SEJAL HATHI: Well, a substantial fraction of the unvaccinated, of course, are our kids, those who simply don't have the choice yet whether or not to be vaccinated. So I believe it's absolutely imperative that the FDA approves vaccine shots for kids 5 to 11. And I do think that that timeline you cited over the next month is feasible and is reasonable.

And so I do want to highlight one point. There are numerous parents, there have been anecdotal reports as well as those that I see as a physician who are eager to vaccinate their children under the age of 12 and are actively requesting shots, even though these have not yet been approved. So I would urge patience. I think that we're still waiting to see the final data around the safety and the efficacy of vaccine doses for kids.

Of course, kids are not mini-adults. They are a population unto themselves. And so we want to make sure that the type of dose that they're getting is appropriate for them. So I think that a month time is certainly feasible before those vaccine doses are approved. And I would urge all parents with kids under the age of 12 to practice social distancing, to mask up, and wait until that announcement is formally made.

- Dr. Sejal Hathi, faculty at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and host of the Civic RX podcast, appreciate you coming on here and chat with us.