Source: Laura Lee, CAROLINA PUBLIC PRESS, 8/13/21


A health care provider places a bandage on the injection site of a patient. CDC via Unsplash.

North Carolinians with compromised immune systems may now receive a third COVID-19 vaccine shot.

Late Thursday night, the U S. Food and Drug Administration expanded the emergency use authorization, and a committee for national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted in favor of the recommendation Friday afternoon, paving the way for the nation’s approximately 7 million immunocompromised patients to receive an additional dose of the mRNA vaccines.
FDA Director Rochelle Walensky signed the recommendation Friday afternoon.

The recommendation followed research showing patients with immunocompromised systems may not have received the same immune response as healthy individuals from the first two COVID-19 vaccinations.

“Among those who had no detectable antibody response to an initial mRNA vaccine series, 33-50% developed an antibody response to an additional dose,” Dr. Kathleen Dooling of the CDC told the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Friday. 

Patients with hematologic cancers saw less response than other cancer patients, and organ transplant recipients saw the lowest response, she said.

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