COVID Vaccine Boosters For Elderly, Vulnerable Could Be Offered In Fall

The director of the National Institutes of Health said the U.S. could decide whether to offer coronavirus booster shots to the most vulnerable part of the U.S. population this fall within the next couple of weeks.

Dr. Francis Collins told NBC News health care workers, nursing home residents and other elderly Americans would be among the first to receive a booster shot amid the surging COVID-19 infections and spread of the delta variant.

Dr. Collins also referred to unvaccinated individuals as "sitting ducks" for the delta variant and pleaded with them to get their shots as the U.S. shows little sign of slowing down its spread.

“This is going very steeply upward with no signs of having peaked out,” Collins said.

Federal health officials have been looking into whether extra shots for vaccinated individuals are necessary as early as the fall season.

Health experts are reviewing U.S. case numbers "almost daily," as well as monitoring the situation in countries such as Israel, which have offered a coronavirus booster to residents over 60 that were vaccinated more than five months prior with the belief that the vaccine's protection against serious illness has since dropped.

No U.S. decision has been made as of Monday (August 16) as cases nationally indicate fully vaccinated individuals are still highly protected from COVID-19, including the delta variant, which is reported to be "highly contagious, likely to be more severe" than previous known strains of the coronavirus and that “breakthrough infections may be as transmissible as unvaccinated cases,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.