The Food and Drug Administration has authorized COVID-19 booster shots for all adults in the United States.
The news comes after several states had recently started allowing all adults to receive the booster shot, despite more narrow federal guidelines in place, according to the Associated Press. All U.S. adults who received their last coronavirus vaccine six months ago are eligible to receive the booster inoculation.
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While the FDA has given the green light for all adults to receive the third jab, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still has to decide whether to expand the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna booster shots to children.
Health officials expanded the rollout of the COVID-19 booster shot on Oct. 21, also allowing people to mix and match vaccines after findings from a National Institutes of Health study of 458 participants revealed that those who had received a Johnson & Johnson vaccine and a Moderna booster showed higher antibody levels two weeks and four weeks later.
Officials stressed the findings were based on antibody levels and did not account for things such as the number of immune cells, according to the New York Times.
The FDA authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech booster vaccine for people ages 65 and older and those deemed high-risk in late September. On Oct. 20, the FDA authorized the emergency use of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson booster shots.
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There have been a total of 47,352,367 COVID-19 cases, with 764,473 deaths attributed to the virus, according to data from the CDC. Roughly 195.7 million people in the U.S. are considered fully vaccinated, while 228.5 million have received one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
Around 32.5 million people have received booster jabs, according to the data.
