Dr. Paul Offit, Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and a co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine. He told the Daily Caller he’s frustrated by the
FDA’s decision to authorize new COVID-19 boosters for kids aged five and over.
“I don’t see evidence that an otherwise healthy young person needs another dose of vaccine,” Offit said.
The FDA made the decision to give Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to the bivalent COVID-19 boosters for kids aged five and older on Wednesday, after previously doing so for anyone 12 and up. The bivalent boosters were developed by Moderna and Pfizer to more specifically target the Omicron variant of the virus. The EUA for the original, monovalent vaccines was withdrawn when the bivalent shots became available, a decision Offit said “disappointed” him.
“All the data that has been presented so far has not in any way supported the notion that the bivalent vaccine was any better than the monovalent vaccine. So why did we stop using the monovalent vaccine? Why did we waste all of that vaccine?”
The Biden administration ordered $5 billion worth of bivalent boosters in recent months, hardly any of which have been used. Since the new boosters were first authorized in early September, just around 5% of eligible Americans have gotten a dose.