With COVID-19 testing positivity starting to plateau, and even slightly increasing earlier this week, Governor Andy Beshear signed an executive order Wednesday afternoon — qualifying all adults 18 years or older living or working in Kentucky for booster shots of the vaccine six months after the second dose of Moderna or Pfizer, or two months after a single-dose Johnson & Johnson inoculation.
While Halloween gatherings and Fall Break festivities are firmly in the rearview mirror, Beshear noted the tight calendar of family holidays in Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day — coupled with waning immunity in spring and summer doses — could be a prime opportunity for numbers of new COVID-19 cases to rise.
Boosters, of course, promote better immunity.
Prior to this executive order, and based on U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, Moderna and Pfizer boosters had only been limited to those 65 and older, those with underlying health and medical conditions limiting immunity, or those who were consistently exposed to many people through their employment.
According to multiple federal reports, the Food and Drug Administration could authorize booster doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for all adults as early as this week. And Kentucky now joins Arkansas, California, Colorado, New Mexico and West Virginia as states that have expanded eligibility for COVID-19 boosters.
As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 430,000 Kentuckians had received a COVID-19 booster. Trigg County, meanwhile, remains as the only “red” county in the Pennyrile.
