Coronavirus Watch: Committee meets to discuss boosters shots

A federal advisory committee was meeting Thursday to discuss the safety and need for a booster shot for people who received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

"We have critical work to do. We can't let up now," President Joe Biden said in an address to the public. "I'm asking everyone, everyone who hasn't gotten vaccinated, please get vaccinated."

The Food and Drug Administration's advisory committee is set to vote Thursday on Moderna boosters and Friday on J&J boosters.

A National Institutes of Health study posted Wednesday found the best booster for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may be either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna. Read more here.

It's Thursday, and this is Coronavirus Watch from the USA TODAY Network. Here's more news you need to know.

• Biden will meet with Pope Francis later this month to discuss the pandemic, among other topics, as part of a larger trip to Italy and the United Kingdom, the White House said Thursday.
• Children, like adults, are equally capable of carrying high levels of infectious coronavirus in their respiratory secretions, according to research published Thursday that builds on earlier, similar findings.
• About 90,000 Americans likely died from June through September for failure to get vaccinated, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.
• The head of Chicago’s police union is encouraging members to "hold the line" and submit vaccination exemption requests ahead of a deadline Friday for city employees to give their vaccination status.
• About 800 San Francisco city workers have asked for medical or religious exemptions to avoid a looming deadline for them to get vaccinated against the coronavirus or lose their jobs. The city has not approved a single request.
• Americans drank more, smoked more, exercised less and spent more time in front of a computer or television compared to pre-pandemic levels, a study led by UCLA researchers found. 
• The number of global COVID-19 cases fell in the last week, continuing a downward trend that began in late August, the World Health Organization said.

Today's numbers: The U.S. has reported more than 44.6 million COVID-19 cases and 719,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, there have been more than 239.3 million cases and more than 4.8 million deaths. About 65% of people in the U.S. have received at least one vaccine shot, and about 56% are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. Among U.S. adults, 78% have received at least one shot, and about 68% are fully vaccinated.

Tracking the pandemic: See the numbers in your area here. See where cases are rising here. See vaccination rates here. And here, compare vaccinations rates worldwide and see which countries are using which vaccines.

– Grace Hauck, USA TODAY breaking news reporter, @grace_hauck