US could establish in coming weeks whether to offer coronavirus booster shots to Americans this fall, said Dr Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health on Sunday. 

The first few recipients will comprise health care workers, nursing home residents and the elderly. Dr Francis Collins further urged the unvaccinated to get jabbed, labelling them as “sitting ducks” while the entire country is being ravaged by the Delta variant. “This is going very steeply upward with no signs of having peaked out,” he said.

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Federal health officials have been actively trying to determine whether extra shots might be needed for the vaccinated as early as this fall. While two doses of vaccines have been enough to protect the US citizens so far, the federal health officials are bracing for the time boosters might be needed. “There is a concern that the vaccine may start to wane in its effectiveness,” Collins said. “And delta is a nasty one for us to try to deal with. The combination of those two means we may need boosters, maybe beginning first with health care providers, as well as people in nursing homes, and then gradually moving forward.”

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The Food and Drug Administration, last week, announced that people with weakened immune systems can get an extra shot of the vaccine. “If it turns out as the data come in, we see we do need to give an additional dose to people in nursing homes, actually, or people who are elderly, we will be absolutely prepared to do that very quickly,” said Dr Anthony Fauci. Collins and Fauci urged that the situation can be controlled only if the unvaccinated receive their shots.

“That’s heartbreaking considering we never thought we would be back in that space again,” Collins said. “But here we are with the delta variant, which is so contagious, and this heartbreaking situation where 90 million people are still unvaccinated who are sitting ducks for this virus, and that’s the mess we’re in. We’re in a world of hurt.”

“We’ve just got to realize that we’re dealing with a public health crisis,” Fauci said. “The more you get infections, the more spread you get, the greater opportunity the virus has to continue to evolve and mutate.”