Story at a glance
- More than 1 million people fully vaccinated with Pfizer’s or Moderna’s coronavirus shot have gone back for a third dose.
- The estimates, based on documents reviewed by ABC News, show that five states lead the way in the number of residents opting for the unauthorized shot.
- But the document does not differentiate between third doses obtained without regard to CDC guidance and those directed by their physician to seek additional protection.
More than 1 million people fully vaccinated with Pfizer’s or Moderna’s coronavirus shot have gone back for a third dose, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The estimates, based on documents reviewed by ABC News, show that five states lead the way in the number of residents opting for the unauthorized shot: Florida, Ohio, California, Illinois and Tennessee. The internal briefing document estimates that 1.1 million people have received a third vaccine dose.
However, the document does not differentiate between third doses obtained without regard to CDC guidance and those directed by their physician to seek additional protection, and the data excludes vaccine doses from sources other than the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, according to ABC.
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Nearly 59 percent of the total U.S. population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19 with more than 352 million doses administered.
Camille Kotton, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a member of the CDC Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices, said at a panel discussion in July she is concerned that some people are choosing to get third shots in an unsupervised fashion. Likewise, she raised the equity issue over people are seeking extra doses on their own while others remain unvaccinated.
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Boosters have yet to be recommended by federal health agencies, but White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said a third dose could be recommended for the immunocompromised within a few weeks.
“No one wants to get ahead of the FDA, because they’re an independent group that makes their decision — then that’s good in many respects because there will never be any concern that we’re influencing them,” Fauci told NBC on Sunday. “I hope that it will be within the next few weeks. I hope that it’s within the month of August.”
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