What conditions or treatments are considered to qualify a person as moderately or severely immunocompromised for the purposes of COVID-19 vaccination?

The conditions and treatments that CDC specifies may result in moderate or severe immunocompromise include but are not limited to:

• Active treatment for solid tumor and hematologic malignancies
• Hematologic malignancies associated with poor responses to COVID-19 vaccines regardless of current treatment status (e.g., chronic lymphocytic leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma, acute leukemia)
• Receipt of solid-organ transplant or an islet transplant and taking immunosuppressive therapy
• Receipt of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T-cell therapy or hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) (within 2 years of transplantation or taking immunosuppressive therapy)
• Moderate or severe primary immunodeficiency (e.g., common variable immunodeficiency disease, severe combined immunodeficiency, DiGeorge syndrome, Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome)
• Advanced HIV infection (people with HIV and CD4 cell counts less than 200/mm³, history of an AIDS-defining illness without immune reconstitution, or clinical manifestations of symptomatic HIV) or untreated HIV infection
• Active treatment with high-dose corticosteroids (i.e., 20 mg or more of prednisone or equivalent per day when administered for 2 or more weeks), alkylating agents, antimetabolites, transplant-related immunosuppressive drugs, cancer chemotherapeutic agents classified as severely immunosuppressive, tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blockers, and other biologic agents that are immunosuppressive or immunomodulatory (e.g., B-cell-depleting agents)

Additional factors to consider in assessing the general level of immune competence in a patient include disease severity, duration, clinical stability, complications, comorbidities, and any potentially immune-suppressing treatment. A patient’s clinical care team is in the best position to evaluate the degree of immunocompromise and timing of vaccination.

See CDC’s interim clinical considerations for this population: www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/clinical-considerations/interim-considerations-us.html#immunocompromised.