Eighteen FDA senior officials say there is NO evidence that fully vaccinated Americans need booster shots because jabs are still effective against severe illness

 A group of senior U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials - including two who announced they will soon resign - have authored a report disagreeing with the White House's plan to roll out COVID-19 vaccine boosters next week.

In a report published in in The Lancet on Monday, the 18 officials write that there is no evidence supporting the need for boosters because fully vaccinated people still have high levels of protection against hospitalization or death.

Instead, they say, vaccine doses should be donated to areas with lower vaccination rates to prevent the emergence of more COVID-19 variants.

Although the administration is ready to roll out boosters starting September 20, President Joe Biden said last week that any decisions - including when to authorize boosters and who should receive them - will be left up to the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

The group of FDA authors of the new report include Dr Marion Gruber and Dr Philip Krause, who plan to step down in the coming months due to disagreements over the rollout of vaccines.

Dr Philip Krause (left) and Dr Marion Gruber (right) were both among 18 FDA officials who published a report opposing the White House's proposed plans to roll out COVID-19 vaccine boosters. Both also plan to resign in protest in the coming months.

'Although the idea of further reducing the number of COVID-19 cases by enhancing immunity in vaccinated people is appealing, any decision to do so should be evidence-based and consider the benefits and risks for individuals and society,' the officials wrote in the report. 

'COVID-19 vaccines continue to be effective against severe disease, including that caused by the Delta variant. 

'Most of the observational studies on which this conclusion is based are, however, preliminary and difficult to interpret precisely due to potential confounding and selective reporting.'

Like many other vaccines, the Covid jabs have declining efficacy over time. 

The Delta variant, which is now the dominant variant in the U.S. and across the world, is also believed to have an increased ability to cause breakthrough cases.

According to a study by the Mayo Clinic - which was cited by White House officials as data supporting the need for boosters - the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is only 42 percent effect against the variant and the Moderna vaccine is 76 percent effective.

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The White House plans to roll out vaccine boosters next week, though the shots are unlikely to receive regulatory approval before then, halting the plan. Pictured: A woman in Tel Aviv, Israel receives a vaccine booster shot on August 30

The same study finds that the vaccines are 75 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations or deaths from the virus, though. 

Whether the waning effectiveness of the vaccines is because of features of the Delta variant in particular, or just a decreasing effectiveness over time in general, could not be determined.

But as long as the vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease and death, that's the most important factor, the officials wrote.

'Even if boosting were eventually shown to decrease the medium-term risk of serious disease, current vaccine supplies could save more lives if used in previously unvaccinated populations than if used as boosters in vaccinated populations,' they wrote.

Vaccinating others abroad could also prevent the creation of variants which eventually find their way to the U.S., like the Delta variant that originated in India.

The vaccines also have rare, but potentially dangerous side effects, though, and every time a person receives a shot there is a chance they suffer one of the symptoms.

Receiving boosters a person does not need could be opening them to unneeded risk.

'There could be risks if boosters are widely introduced too soon, or too frequently, especially with vaccines that can have immune-mediated side-effects (such as myocarditis, which is more common after the second dose of some mRNA vaccines, or Guillain-Barre syndrome, which has been associated with adenovirus-vectored COVID-19 vaccines,' the report reads.