Governor of Colorado Jared Polis
Jared Schutz PolisColorado requiring vaccinations for health care workers Colorado governor rescinds 1864 policy that led to the massacre of Native Americans The Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by AT&T – Census marks first in US: white population shrink MORE (D) on Monday asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine booster vaccines and authorize vaccines for children ages 5 to 11.
“The benefits outweigh the costs,” Polis said during a news conference, The Colorado Sun reported. “The FDA needs to get out of its ivory tower and realize that there is a real-life pandemic with 900 hospitalizations in Colorado, tens of thousands across the country. We have the capacity to end it. We have to show the will to finish it ”.
“At the very least, the FDA should get out of the way and allow people to make that decision to protect themselves,” the Colorado governor said.
His statements responded to a journalist’s question about an article published in the medical journal The Lancet by two FDA vaccine regulators, Marion Gruber and Philip Krause, who argued that boosters were not necessary.
Polis said “we can all celebrate” that the two officials who co-authored the piece left the agency.
“They have blood on their hands and there are thousands of Americans dead today because of their delays in reinforcement firing,” he said.
According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, about 75 percent of eligible residents have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Almost 69% are completely vaccinated.
The Biden administration has said it aims to start administering COVID-19 booster shots with the Pfizer vaccine as of Sept. 20.
“The available data make it very clear that protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection begins to decline over time after initial doses of vaccination and, in association with the Delta variant domain, we are beginning to see evidence of reduced protection against mild and moderate illness, “White House health officials said in a statement last month.
In early September, Moderna began the process of sending data for its own backup plan.
However, the World Health Organization (WHO) criticized plans to administer booster shots to rich countries, as many low- and middle-income countries struggle to vaccinate their own populations.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has repeatedly called for a moratorium on reinforcements until the end of the year.
“We have been calling for vaccine equity from the beginning, not after the richest countries have been served,” Tedros said during a press conference last week. “I will not be silent when companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think that the world’s poor should be satisfied with the remnants.”