Your questions, answered When will the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allow booster shots for people who are immunocompromised, and how much protection will the booster shots provide? —Arthur in California Actually, that day is upon us. Additional coronavirus shots were recently authorized for people with compromised immune systems to help provide added protection, as the highly transmissible delta variant continues to surge across the United States. The CDC late last week recommended a third dose of the two-shot messenger RNA vaccines — Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — for some immunocompromised individuals 12 and older, after the Food and Drug Administration amended its authorizations. As The Washington Post reported, such patients include those being treated for certain cancers; those who have received an organ transplant; those with advanced or untreated HIV infection; those taking high-dose steroids and those who have chronic medical conditions that can weaken immune response, such as chronic kidney disease. Immunocompromised patients will not have to get a prescription for a third shot; they will simply have to attest they have impaired immune systems. Many people with compromised immune systems, including a number of our readers, have expressed concern about waning antibodies, particularly as delta became the dominant variant in the country. Indeed, a small study in Israel recently showed that about 40 percent of the 152 breakthrough infections that resulted in hospitalization were immunocompromised. It is a common practice to give immunocompromised patients boosters or higher doses of a vaccine, including the influenza vaccine, to try to generate a stronger immune response, said Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease expert who works with HIV patients at the University of California at San Francisco. As with most vaccines, it is hard to say exactly how much more protection the extra coronavirus shot will provide as it will vary from patient to patient. But the third dose is likely to give many a boost, Gandhi said. Research has shown that immunocompromised patients can develop increased antibodies after a third shot of the coronavirus vaccines. A paper published earlier this month in the New England Journal of Medicine found that organ transplant recipients who took both doses of the Moderna vaccine had "substantially higher immunogenicity" — meaning an effective immune response — after a third shot than those in the placebo group. "This is a very good day in my mind," Gandhi told The Post when the news broke Friday. "When a virus is still circulating at such high rates — which is what's clearly happening now — it can feel vulnerable to be an immunocompromised person." An additional shot, she said, will give some immunocompromised people a better chance to protect themselves. | 
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