The agency said it would approve new versions of the vaccine only for adults 65 years of age and older as well as for people with one or more risk factors for severe COVID-19 outcomes. These risk factors include medical conditions such as asthma, cancer, chronic kidney disease, heart disease and diabetes. However, healthy younger adults and children who fall outside of these groups may not be eligible to receive the COVID-19 shot this fall. Vaccine manufacturers will have to conduct clinical trials to demonstrate that the vaccine benefits low-risk groups. According to Makary and Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration is moving away from these universal recommendations and instead taking a risk-based approach based on its interpretation of public health trends ' specifically, the declining COVID-19 booster uptake, a lack of strong evidence that repeated boosters improve health outcomes for healthy people and the fact that natural immunity from past COVID-19 infections is...
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