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Texas County Memorial Hospital will be administering the third dose of the COVID vaccine to those who qualify at its clinics at Licking and Mountain Grove.
Following recent announcements from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, certain immunocompromised individuals can begin receiving third doses of COVID-19 vaccine in Missouri.
A third dose of the PfizerNBioTech or Moderna vaccines may be administered to moderately to severely immunocompromised people due to a medical condition or combination of immunosuppressive medication or treatments including but not limited to the following:
·Immunocompromised due to solid organ transplant and taking immune suppressing medications
·Immunocompromised due to active treatment for solid tumor and hematologic malignancies
·Immune compromised due to Receipt of CAR-T cell or hematopoietic stem cell transplant (within two years of transplantation or taking immunosuppression therapy)
·Moderate to severe primary immunodeficiency (eg., DiGeorge, Wiskott-Aldrich Syndromes)
·Immunocompromised due to advanced or untreated HIV infection
·Immunocompromised due to “Active treatment with high-dose corticosteroids or other drugs that may suppress immune response: high dose corticosteroids (ie.,≥ 20 mg prednisone or equivalent per day), alkylating agents, antimetabolites, transplant-related immunosuppressive drugs, cancer chemotherapeutic agents classified as severely immunosuppressive, tumor-necrosis (TNF) blocker or other biologic agents that are immunosuppressive or immunomodulatory”
Individuals who do not meet the criteria for “moderately to severely immunocompromised” do not need a third dose at this time.
This guidance does not apply to those who received the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine. For people who received either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine series, a third dose of the same mRNA vaccine should be used. Individuals should wait at least 28 days between their second and third doses.
Announcements from federal health officials came after the analysis of studies demonstrating that immunosuppressed people are more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19, are at higher risk for prolonged infection, are more likely to transmit the virus and experience lower vaccine effectiveness.
Persons can call the TCMH Mountain Grove clinic at 417-926-1770 or our TCMH Licking Family Clinic at 573-674-3011 to schedule your third dose. Furthermore, persons will be required to sign an attestation sheet indicating they are immunocompromised.