Alex_Altair answers What’s the status of third vaccine doses?

[Alex_Altair]

Whelp, to answer my own question, this is above the fold on the NYT right now.

The World Health Organization called on Wednesday for a moratorium on coronavirus vaccine booster shots until the end of September to help all countries vaccinate at least 10 percent of their populations, appealing to the world’s wealthiest nations to address dramatic disparities in global vaccination rates.

…

Scientists have still not come to a consensus on whether booster shots are necessary. But as worries emerge about continuing pandemic waves and future lockdowns, an increasing number of countries like Germany, Israel and France are preparing to give part of their population booster doses, or have already started.

Studies have indicated that the immunity generated by the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines is long-lasting. Researchers are still working to understand recent Israeli data suggesting that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine declined in efficacy months after inoculation.

(Granted, the WHO is not the CDC.)

[Brendan Long]

But is there any evidence that the US will actually start exporting doses if they’re unused, or will they just sit around until they expire?

[Josh You]

The US is currently donating doses to other countries in large quantities. Domestically, it has around 54m doses distributed but not used right now. (https://​​covid.cdc.gov/​​covid-data-tracker/​​#vaccinations). Some but certainly not all of those are at risk of expiration. If US authorities recommended booster shots for the general population then that would easily use up the currently unused supply and reduce vaccine exports.