State health officials said they rely on a complex set of measurements that would confuse and potentially mislead the public if they were made public. Dr. Lee Riley, chairman of the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health infectious disease division, disagreed.
"There is more uncertainty created by NOT releasing the data that only the state has access to," he said in an email. Its release would allow outside experts to assess its value for projecting trends and the resulting decisions on lifting restrictions, he wrote.
The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna require two doses, given three weeks and one month apart, respectively. But second shots can still be administered beyond that timeframe, up to 42 days after the first, the CDC said Friday. There's no data on doses administered after that time.
The agency also said a person may receive a different vaccine for the second shot only in "exceptional situations" where the first-dose vaccine is unknown or unavailable. Clinical trials did not evaluate the safety or effectiveness of interchanging vaccines.
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