as health care personnel and also frontline workers, and i think there will be robust discussions among the members of the acip in that regard. okay. and if it s the collecting of data and science that will determine when and if a third, you know, booster shot should be extended, you know, to everyone. what is your point of view on when the white house gets ahead of that and sets dates perhaps raising expectations for people only to be disappointed when the fda and/or cdc are in disagreement on how to read the science and the data. again, you re raising a wonderful point. it was disappointing that a specific date was put into place and raised that the boosters would be available for everyone.
bret: there are growing questions tonight about president biden s vaccine policy and whether he is ignoring medical advice about booster shots. we will know more tomorrow after an fda meeting. tonight, white house correspondent peter doocy looks at what s at stake for president biden. days after several afghans were killed clinging to a cargo plane president biden tried to change the subject back to covid. there s a simple rule rule. 8 months after your second shot, get a booster shot. four days from today. we will be ready to start these booster this booster program during the week of september 20. that s as long as the fda and the cdc sign off. there is data provided by the fda that will be analyzed next week acip is planning to meet and based on the recommendation we re prepared to operationalize our plan. but, fda advisers write two
in the driver, seat at the fda. second, the actual application, from pfizer, my understanding, is it s 100,000 pages long. you can t read that. and come up with a detailed analysis, of all the issues that you want to raise. if you re one of the scientific, unpaid, scientific advisers that are supposed to tell the fda esther no. you can t read 100 the awesome pages in a few days. and then right behind, them comes moderna, they re going to have another hundred thousand pages, and so on. this is a huge process. and we don t have a reliable, system in place, for rapidly reviewing such proposals, in reaching conclusions. so far, the acip, which is the advisory group to the cdc, that then tells the fda yes or no on your idea, for any particular drug innovation, the acip, he
innovation, the acip has done a pretty darned good job so far, but this is over the top, where we are now. and the obvious next question everybody s going to ask. first you said five months, then eight months, then you said six months, how many months after second dose? then said everybody, then you roll it back to just pfizer recipients. so what do the moderna and johnson & johnson recipients supposed to do? so confusing. on top of everything else, we all know people well connected, well financed, and have already gotten their third dose because they had a little discussion with their doctor or pharmacist, boom, there it is. now we have a whole other layer of inequity built on top of already existing, deeply unequal distribution of all the benefits
persons, those living in nursing homes, can wait a very long period of time before they get the next vaccine. probably the longer you wait, the better it is. certainly don t get a booster before six months. eight months, maybe even longer than that. and for the people who are immunocompromised or older people, do you think that september 20th that they will be able to see a pfizer booster shot? well, i don t want to put a date because, again, i want the fda and i want the cdc to make a recommendation based object the science and based on reviewing the recommendations. immunosuppressed people today can start getting a booster shot because the reality that s already been approved by both the fda and the acip. great point. dr. carlos del rio, thank you very much for all the facts. we really appreciate it. good to be with you. we have some breaking news out of the state department. how the u.s. helped four citizens get out of afghanistan. we have those dramatic details