Reevaluating Fully Vaccinated Status for Workers

If your company is requiring employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, you may need to reevaluate what that means. With new studies from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finding that a booster shot provides the best protection against the omicron coronavirus variant, the CDC is emphasizing the importance of staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccination schedules, Becker’s Hospital Review reports.

During a Friday press briefing at the White House, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the agency is working to “pivot the language to make sure that everybody is as up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines as they personally could be, should be, based on when they got their last vaccine. That means if you recently got your second dose, you’re not eligible for a booster, you’re up to date. If you are eligible for a booster and you haven’t gotten it, you’re not up to date and you need to get your booster in order to be up to date.” 

One study, published in Friday’s CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), analyzed nearly 88,000 hospitalizations across 10 states. Researchers found getting boosted was 90% effective at preventing hospitalizations during a period in December and January when omicron was the dominant variant. In comparison, getting two shots was 57% effective when it had been at least six months past the second shot.

A second study, also published in Friday’s MMWR, concluded that people with three shots were less likely to get infected with omicron. Looking at data from 25 state and local health departments, researchers found 149 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people on average each week among those who had received booster vaccines. For those who had only two doses, there were 255 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people.

A third study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that among 13,000 U.S. omicron cases, the odds of developing a symptomatic infection were 66% lower for people who were boosted compared to those who had only received two shots.

CDC data shows that more than 210 million Americans, or 63% of the population, had received two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine (or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine) as of January 23, 2022. Of that percentage, nearly 40% had received a booster dose.