--- title: More People Are Getting COVID-19 Boosters Than First Shots description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/6110600/more-people-getting-boosters-than-first-shots/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-10-26T20:15:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:16:02.587Z article:section: Health og:title: More People Are Getting COVID-19 Boosters Than First Shots og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. og:url: https://time.com/6110600/more-people-getting-boosters-than-first-shots/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt068c5784f2ef61ad/698a1e29096a94141a6abcbd/GettyImages-1344323369.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4760 og:image:height: 2678 og:image:alt: Safeway pharmacist Ashley McGee fills a syringe with the Pfizer COVID-19 booster vaccination at a vaccination booster shot clinic on October 01, 2021 in San Rafael, California. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: More People Are Getting COVID-19 Boosters Than First Shots twitter:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt068c5784f2ef61ad/698a1e29096a94141a6abcbd/GettyImages-1344323369.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # COVID-19 Boosters Are Now More Popular Than First Shots > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. 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It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=951958ab-1f56-4ae1-afad-22fbf6792e3a&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Making the COVID-19 Vaccine: A 50,000 step process [Watch (HLS stream): Making the COVID-19 Vaccine: A 50,000 step process](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/XGIqdw9j.m3u8) (7:28)  _Published 2021-04-18. Inside BioNTech's quest to vaccinate the world_  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Oct 26, 2021 8:15 PM UTC Inside BioNTech's quest to vaccinate the world  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Oct 26, 2021 8:15 PM UTC When Americans divide themselves into camps, they stick to them fiercely: Democrats versus Republicans, pro-life versus pro-choice, gun rights versus gun control. Add to that, as has become apparent over the course of the past year, those who are pro- versus anti-coronavirus vaccines. As with so many other polarizing issues, your position on getting or not getting inoculated against COVID-19 has become more than a medical question. It’s morphed into a form of cultural identifier, a sign of your membership in one tribe or another. More than ever, that’s becoming clear as booster shots are rolled out around the nation, with about 70 million Americans now eligible for an additional dose and tens of millions more set to join them as the eligibility age inevitably falls. The extra dose comes as very good news to a lot of the population—people who are mindful of the way vaccine-induced antibody levels fall over time and anxious to bump them back up. But that doesn’t remotely include everybody, with resistance to even initial vaccinations keeping the country far from the much hoped-for herd immunity. All of this is playing out as the government looks beyond first doses and encourages Americans to step up for their extra dose. Plenty of people are responding. According to [data from](https://data.cdc.gov/Vaccinations/COVID-19-Vaccination-Trends-in-the-United-States-N/rh2h-3yt2) the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), booster rates are now exceeding first-shot rates across the country. In the week ending October 24, just over 400,000 people per day were getting boosters, compared to just over 200,000 receiving their first shots. Those numbers have been moving in a sort of Newtonian, equal-and-opposite dance since late August, when more than 400,000 people daily were getting first doses and boosters were just being rolled out to the immunocompromised. The lines crossed in late September, [when the CDC recommended](https://time.com/6101259/cdc-pfizer-booster-shot/) Pfizer-BioNTech boosters for at-risk groups, and the upward trend for boosters and downward trend for first shots has continued since. Boosters got [another bump on October 21](https://time.com/6109275/cdc-panel-recommends-moderna-jj-boosters/), when the CDC approved additional doses of the Moderna and J&J vaccines. Those recommendations, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said in a [statement](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p1021-covid-booster.html) last week, “are another example of our fundamental commitment to protect as many people as possible from COVID-19.” When it comes to the boosters, the government’s pro-vaccine message is apparently being heard. When it comes to first doses, not so much. _This story was adapted from_ The Coronavirus Brief, _TIME’s daily COVID-19 newsletter._ [_Sign up here._](https://time.com/newsletters/) ## Transcript Kind: captions Language: en oh yes yes i'm vaccinated yes Very cool yes yeah yes, I did it was very cool to to know okay I'm gonna be vaccinated with a vaccine that I know really from day one I mean who can tell that they're part of the solution for such a pandemic situation I guess only a few people can say that and I'm really happy to be part of that If you've been vaccinated for COVID-19, chances are that you are benefiting from the science happening here at the German biotech company BioNtech. In December 2020 BioNtech in partnership with Pfizer were the first to earn authorization to distribute their vaccine to the public In March 2021 TIME spent a week watching how BioNtech makes a batch of 8 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at their new manufacturing plant in Marburg they expect to produce 1 billion doses a year the pace of production has been breakneck from the start So in 2020 I think we worked at every holiday, I can remember Easter Saturday I was standing here pipetting samples to have the results as soon as possible and now 24-hour shifts in this lab are producing vaccines that will be shipped around the world There are approximately 50, 000 steps at the lab it begins with bags of pure mRNA the molecule that tells cells how to make the proteins that launch the immune response and a buffer solution that starts the coding process it emerges in bulk at the other end of the process as a liquid destined for vials most of the machines are named after the engineers that developed the process this one is named after Margaret the first patient in the clinical trials to receive the vaccine but the beating heart of the lab is this machine a container that uses pressurized ethanol to encase the mRNA and special lipid nanoparticles those nanoparticles keep the mRNA protected until it can jumpstart the immune response in the body's cells Speed is essential but inside the lab everyone moves slowly and methodically each of the 50,000 steps is logged by one technician confirmed by a second and only then does it actually happen it's very important that the quality of the product and all the raw materials is perfect here and so no impurities should be present in all raw materials and nothing which we don't want to have in our products one wrong move has the potential to damage the final product if there's any accidental exposure let's say from an ill-timed sneeze the entire batch must be thrown out, all eight million doses that's why everyone wears layers of protection and they even disinfect their gloved hands repeatedly in the lab where we were filming no one had ever told the technicians how many doses were in a batch after that they sprayed another application of disinfectant onto their gloves just to be sure based on our technology and on the antigen we were using no I wasn't I'm very confident in the technology we have until now vaccine development has been a slow process the BioNtech vaccine uses a new technology based on mRNA it is revolutionizing the way vaccines can be produced When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, BioNtech was primarily a cancer vaccine company but by using this new mRNA technology it was able to quickly pivot to a coronavirus vaccine when you look back at any project you've ever done you've always looked back at the start and go wow okay if I'd known that now i could have cut you know a few hurdles out of my way earlier right but you're in a situation where you're doing something especially for us as a smaller company that was unprecedented the second part of the process happens at another factory where vials are filled and packed into boxes for shipment as the cycle comes to an end there's little time to celebrate after all another batch is waiting to be made ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6110600/more-people-getting-boosters-than-first-shots/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6110600/more-people-getting-boosters-than-first-shots/"},"headline":"COVID-19 Boosters Are Now More Popular Than First Shots","datePublished":"2021-10-26T20:15:38.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T09:16:02.587Z","description":"Booster rates are now exceeding first-shot rates across the United 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