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WASHINGTON – Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., entered the debate over giving the COVID-19 vaccines as a single dose and delaying a second dose, urging President Joe Biden’s administration to consider a new vaccine strategy to get more doses out to Americans.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky and COVID-19 task force coordinator Jeffrey Zients, Khanna urged them to work with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a CDC committee, “to gather and consider data” on the effectiveness of single-dose vaccinations. Khanna is the first lawmaker to publicly call on the Biden administration to consider the strategy in hopes of sparking a debate on the issue amid a bumpy rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.
“Every person we vaccinate today is a life potentially saved. If clinical data supports an effective one-dose vaccine regimen, it could nearly double our daily vaccination numbers, simplify administration, and reduce COVID-19 deaths in the long run,” he wrote.
Khanna’s position is in contrast with the Biden administration, which has supported delivering both doses of the vaccine within the recommended timeframe of 28 days for the Moderna/BioNTech vaccine and 21 days for the Pfizer vaccine.
Some medical experts have advocated giving the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in single-dose regimens rather than the currently recommended two doses in order to rapidly build immunity among Americans.
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“We still want to get two doses in everyone, but I think right now, in advance of this surge, we need to get as many one-doses in as many people over 65 as we possibly can, to reduce serious illness and death that is going to occur over the weeks ahead,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who advised the Biden transition team, on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” referring to a potential surge in cases as new COVID-19 variants spread.
And Robert M. Wachter, the chair of the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, and Ashish K. Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, wrote in a Jan. 3 Washington Post op-ed, “We should give people a single vaccination now and defer their second shot until more doses of vaccine become available,” because of current vaccine supply constraints.
Biden administration officials said Monday they were not planning on changing their strategy to administer two doses of the vaccine.
Walensky, the CDC director, told reporters “we should follow the science” in deploying the vaccines, and noted there was an “ongoing concern that we would see the emergence of more variants if there was low-level virus and it was allowed to mutate.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reiterated the current policy about getting two doses when “dealing with a two-dose regimen” like Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna’s, saying “the first priority will always be to get the people who have gotten their first doses to get their second doses. And then additional doses will be given to the next group of people who will get their first doses.”
“There are no doses that are hanging around,” he said. “A dose that is available is going to go into someone’s arm.”
Khanna told USA TODAY in a phone interview he wanted the CDC to consider this issue because of a potential “five-alarm fire” the country faced with another surge in COVID cases.
The country will “have to make decisions about saving lives” and needed a “data-driven approach,” he said.
Khanna acknowledged some concerns about a potentially false sense of security among people who received a single dose but argued given the severity of the pandemic so far, “people are not going to be lulled into complacency” or be confused about a second dose.
Asked about the Biden administration’s stance and concerns about a single dose not protecting against mutations, Khanna said “let’s get the data out there,” adding this was a question that should be discussed openly.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance on vaccinations at the end of January to say the second dose of a two-shot vaccine can be administered up to 6 weeks after the first.
The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna require two doses, given three weeks and one month apart, respectively. But second shots can still be administered beyond that timeframe, up to 42 days after the first, the CDC said Friday. There’s no data on doses administered after that time.
The agency also said a person may receive a different vaccine for the second shot only in “exceptional situations” where the first-dose vaccine is unknown or unavailable. Clinical trials did not evaluate the safety or effectiveness of interchanging vaccines.
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Contributing: Michael James, Ryan Miller, and Grace Hauck
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