According to CNN Health, the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve second dose of of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines booster dose for adults above 50-years.

The second booster shots is reportedly a permissive recommendation, meaning those who wish to get them, they would be permitted, after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) takes up the FDA recommendation. The CNN Health writes “The decision to make fourth doses available now will bypass independent groups of scientific advisers for both the FDA and CDC, which would normally meet and publicly review the available science and then make recommendations to the agencies.”

There are solid data from Israel for age 60+ (the only group reported on to date) for enhanced protection (vs severe illness) out to 3 months compared with 3 doses. It is reasonable to extend that and provide it as an option, since the 3rd dose has pronounced benefit in age 50+.

– Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist who is director of the Scripps Translational Research Institute in California (source: CNN Health)

Dr. Eric Rubin, editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine who sits on the FDA’s VRBPAC, told CNNhe has not seen enough data whether its beneficial for older (50+) adults.

The only data that I’ve seen has been for participants followed for just a few weeks. The most important information is going to be how well a fourth dose protects highly vulnerable people against serious disease and death, and I don’t know when that will be available.

– Dr. Eric Rubin, editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine (source: CNN Health)

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Dr. Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA’s VRBPAC, told CNN health that the Biden administration was acting ahead of sufficient scientific data.

“Where’s the evidence that somebody over 50 benefits from a fourth dose? Because the evidence to date appears to support the possibility for those over 65, although I haven’t, we haven’t, seen all the data. But where’s the evidence for a 50 to 64 year old? Where’s that evidence? Because absent that evidence, then there shouldn’t be this recommendation,” told Dr Offit to CNN.

Other researchers disagree. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and medical professor at the University of California, San Francisco, told the New York Times “healthy younger people with one booster were fine at this point, but that older people ‘should probably start receiving fourth shots now‘ “.