Numerous US citizens received coronavirus vaccine booster doses at a close record pace after the Joe Biden government extended eligibility recent week, but health authorities worried about climbing COVID-19 infections ahead of the winter break urged them to acquire the additional protection against the fatal disease.

According to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of Nov. 23, nearly 37.5M Americans had gotten an extra dose in America.

Dr. William Schaffner, M.D., a top infectious disease specialist from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, said that he thinks it’s a good beginning. Moreover, he said he’s confident boosters are more vital for personal defense than for curbing the spread of the lethal virus.

Schaffner said of COVID vaccine booster uptake that he’s hoping for a lot better. Ne would like to see all of that increase twofold rapidly.

American drug regulators extended booster eligibility to all adults, permitting millions more US nationals to receive additional protection due to a recent rise in infections, including among the fully inoculated. Earlier, Americans aged 65 and up and those at high-risk cases amid underlying medical or job conditions were eligible for the booster doses.

The US CDC data shows that around 6M people received booster shots of one of the three authorized jabs last week, the highest in a week since additional shots were first approved, and an increase of over fifteen percent from the past week.

New COVID-19 Variant

More than 130M fully inoculated US adults are now booster-eligible, at least 180-days after the 2nd shot of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines or 2-months after getting Janssen/Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine.

Furthermore, more than 25 percent of people now eligible have received booster doses. Some experts felt earlier booster dose eligibility requirements were too complicated and might have disheartened individuals from receiving them or that prior evidence for the additional doses was lacking.

Executive Director of International Vaccine Access Center at the ‘Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,’ Dr. William John Moss, MD, said that there is a lot better explanation for the additional shots now than when the White House first endorsed the idea in August this year. Then, they did produce some mixed messages. Fortunately, now, they’re in a better place.

On Thursday, South Africa’s Minister of Health, Joe Phaahla, proclaimed the detection of a new COVID-19 variant that appears to be spreading quickly in regions of the country. He added that so far, it has been identified in Botswana, South Africa, and in a tourist to Hong Kong from South Africa.

Dr @mvankerkhove gives an update on #COVID19 virus variant B.1.1.529, during the #AskWHO session on 25 November 2021 ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/ZpflfEYzW9

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) November 25, 2021

Scientists said a new coronavirus variant that carries an extremely high number of transformations might drive waves of fatal disease by evading the body’s defenses. The B.1.1.529 COVID variant has thirty-two mutations in the key spike protein, the part of the lethal virus that most jabs use to prime the immune response against coronavirus disease. Mutations in the spike protein could affect the SARS-CoV-2’s ability to infect cells and transmit; however, it also makes it more challenging for the immune system to attack the pathogen.