A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel on Friday recommended additional shots of coronavirus vaccines for certain immunocompromised Americans, The Hill reported.
The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted unanimously 11-0 to endorse giving third doses of mRNA vaccines to people with moderately to severely weakened immune systems.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is expected to quickly give final approval within hours, paving the way for millions of immunocompromised people to get a third shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines as soon as this weekend.
The move came after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) late Thursday night authorized extra doses of the vaccines for people with organ transplants and those "diagnosed with conditions that are considered to have an equivalent level of immunocompromise."
The authorization is for people as young as 12 years old who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and people at least 18 years old for Moderna vaccines.
Neither the CDC nor FDA recommend booster doses for the general population, though some people have been taking matters into their own hands to get extra doses, noted The Hill.
Israel recently launched a mass vaccination campaign promoting a third dose of the coronavirus vaccine, becoming the first country in the world to offer a third dose of the COVID vaccine.
The campaign was originally intended for those over 60 years of age, but on Thursday, the expert committee of the Ministry of Health recommended that a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine be administered to people aged 50 and over and to medical staff, as well as to prisoners, wardens and people with background illnesses regardless of age.
Britain will also offer booster vaccines against COVID-19 to 32 million citizens starting early next month with up to 2,000 pharmacies set to deliver the program.
Germany has also announced it will start offering COVID-19 booster shots as of September.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)