Fauci says he hopes single COVID vaccine booster will do the job

COVID vaccine booster shots hopefully will be strong enough that supplemental shots aren’t needed every six to 12 months, the country’s top infectious disease expert said on Sunday.

Booster shots were authorized by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday for every American 18 and older who has received a Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine. Recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine already had been cleared for boosters.

“We would hope, and this is something that we’re looking at very carefully, that that third shot … not only boosts you way up, but increases the durability so that you will not necessarily need it every six months or a year,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We’re hoping it pushes it out more.”

Before Friday’s announcement from the feds, a number of states had begun offering boosters for adults. The governors of Connecticut and New Mexico recently said they wouldn’t consider people fully vaccinated unless they had gotten boosters.

Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, wasn’t willing to take it that far.