Many Americans who want to get the newest COVID vaccines may now have a harder time doing so after the Food and Drug Administration limited approval for the shots to adults 65 and older or those who are at high risk for severe disease.

The vaccine was previously available to anyone six months and older.

People have questions and we're going to try to answer some of them now

with Caitlin Jettelina, she's adjunct professor at the Yale School of Public Health,

and the author of the substack column, Your Local Epidemiologist. Welcome back to The News Hour.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Let's just start with the basics here. Right now,

according to the FDA, who is eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine?

That's right. So FDA narrowed its label last week for COVID-19 vaccine to only people that are 65 and older and those six months through

64 years with at least one high-risk condition.

This is a big departure from past years, and it is quite unusual for the FDA to restrict a vaccine

this way. Meanwhile, medical groups don't necessarily agree with the FDA label.

Pediatricians, for example,

recommend all kids under two get vaccinated, whether they have a high risk condition or not,

plus, you know, high risk kids and those living with vulnerable family members. And so as you can

imagine, this is starting to get confusing pretty quickly because you can end up with scenarios where on one hand, pediatricians say a healthy one-year-old should get a COVID vaccine this fall because of their little vulnerable immune systems.

But on the other hand, FDA label says no.

And so that means for some families, they could be pushed onto getting off-label

COVID-19 vaccines this fall. Just one more definitional question here. When you're talking about high

risk, what are we talking about? What does that include? Yeah, so FDA didn't spell this out last

week, but they did defer to CDC's list, and this is good news because it's

very broad. High risk includes everything from pregnancy to those with diabetes or obesity and

cancer, disabilities, or even mental health conditions. And so by some estimates, that covers

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