--- 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: 2026-02-24T10:27:57.317Z 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: August 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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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. 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 daily 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.  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Oct 26, 2021 8:15 PM UTC  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. 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. Justin Sullivan—Getty Images  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/) ```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":"2026-02-24T10:27:57.317Z","description":"Booster rates are now exceeding first-shot rates across the United States","url":"https://time.com/6110600/more-people-getting-boosters-than-first-shots/","keywords":["COVID-19","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt068c5784f2ef61ad/698a1e29096a94141a6abcbd/GettyImages-1344323369.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jeffrey Kluger","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt068c5784f2ef61ad/698a1e29096a94141a6abcbd/GettyImages-1344323369.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"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.","caption":"Vaccination Clinic Administers Booster Shots In California","creditText":"Justin Sullivan—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/covid-19/","name":"COVID-19"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6110600/more-people-getting-boosters-than-first-shots/","name":"COVID-19 Boosters Are Now More Popular Than First Shots"}}]}] ```