The question: COVID Vaccinated Does Need Booster Shots?
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| Lately I have been asked by COVID-19 vaccinated folks, “Do I need booster a booster shot?”
As the Delta variant continues to spread like wildfire— and breakthrough infections are occurring among vaccinated people — there is momentum is building in some rich countries for giving additional doses of a Covid-19 vaccine to some groups fully vaccinated people. |
Germany, following Israel’s example, said this week that it would start offering booster shots to some higher-risk citizens. France, Russia and Hungary are doing the same. Britain has already purchased 60 million extra Pfizer vaccine doses in case vulnerable people need a third shot this fall. |
| At the same time, billions of people around the world continue to wait for their first dose. There is great disparity between the rich and the poor nations. Many of the poor nations depend on charitable donations to vaccinate their people.
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| Do we need booster shots? Here are some answers, with help from The Times’s of Israel Apoorva Mandavilli, who has been covering the pandemic. |
The question of immunity |
| Scientists aren’t in agreement about whether we need boosters. |
| For now, the U.S. isn’t following those countries’ leads. Instead it’s saying that for people who are fully vaccinated, an additional dose is not necessary. Not yet, anyway. According to the CDC, “Getting vaccinated against COVID-19 will help protect you for the near future, but it’s still not clear how long protection will last. We don’t yet know whether COVID-19 booster shots will be needed, or at what intervals. Testing is currently underway.” |
| Most studies indicate that immunity from mRNA vaccines, like Pfizer’s and Moderna’s, is long-lasting. Recent data from Israel suggested a decline in efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine against infection after a few months. “I would go tomorrow to get the third shot,” Dr. Gary Simon, a George Washington University infectious disease expert, told The Atlantic last week. Pfizer and Moderna have requested for a third shot saying that the efficacy of the vaccines starts to wean in 6-8 months U.S. regulators, however, have pushed back on Pfizer’s claims. In a joint statement, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that Americans who have been fully vaccinated “do not need a booster shot at this time,” emphasizing that the vaccines remain highly effective against severe disease and death. |
| But the effectiveness of preventing serious illness remained extremely high, according to the data even if one gets a break through infection when one has been vaccinated. |
| Preventing infections isn’t the primary aim of the vaccines, Apoorva explains, even though they protect against that as well. “They were designed to prevent hospitalization and death,” she says, “and they’re doing that very well.” |
| At the moment, Apoorva told said, the only people who seem to need extra shots are those who are immunocompromised. In the U.S., that is 3 to 5 percent of the population, some of whom will not produce a strong immune response from a vaccine. |
| “They’re not fully protected right now,” Apoorva says. A third shot could offer them the immunity most people get from two shots. |
| A lot of scientists believe that shots should first go to unvaccinated people in poor countries — including health care workers and older people — rather than giving boosters to people who are unlikely to get very sick. Sending shots abroad has humanitarian benefits, Apoorva explains, but also scientific ones: If fewer people around the globe get the virus, it makes it harder for new variants to evolve. |
What the U.S. is doing |
| The government, too, isn’t entirely sure about the issue. |
| Last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci said people didn’t need boosters yet, given that more than 90 percent of people being hospitalized with Covid were unvaccinated. |
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| But Biden administration officials increasingly think some vulnerable populations (such as people 65 and over and people with compromised immune systems) will probably need extra doses. |
| The administration has already bought enough vaccine to deliver third doses of Pfizer and Moderna if needed, The Times’s Sharon LaFraniere has reported. It has also sent almost 112 million shots to other countries. |
A push toward boosters |
| Pfizer, which is a for-profit company, has been making its own case for booster shots. Last month, the company reported that the power of its two-dose vaccine wanes slightly over time, but continues to offer lasting protection against serious disease. “It’s in their interest to say third doses are required,” Apoorva says. In fact, contrary to Pfizer’s study, new laboratory data has emerged suggesting that the Pfizer vaccine offers protection that could last for years. So what exactly is going on? Here’s a look at what the data shows about how long immunity lasts among the fully vaccinated—and what scientists want to know before they recommend giving anyone another dose.
Jane O’Halloran, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, agrees, pointing out that scientists expect to see a decline in antibody levels. “If you had high levels of antibodies to every pathogen that you come across, your blood would be sludge,” she says. So it’s not about the quantity of the antibodies. It’s about their quality—making sure that the antibodies present are actually doing the job and that your body has the tools to quickly create them when they’re needed. Training camps of the immune systemO’Halloran was part of a research team that set out to investigate whether the vaccines are indeed preparing the body to fight COVID-19 over the long haul. In their study, they took samples from lymph nodes—which contain B and T cells—of 14 healthy adults who received the Pfizer vaccine. When the B and T white blood cells respond to a disease and interact with one another, they create something known as germinal centers—essentially training camps for the immune system. Found in the lymph nodes, the germinal centers are where plasma cells learn how to make antibodies that will be most effective in fighting a pathogen. |
| It’s also more profitable to sell vaccine doses to countries like the U.S., which pay more money for the shots than poorer countries could. Pfizer and Moderna both recently increased the price of their vaccines in new contracts with the E.U. |
| There’s also some anecdotal evidence of people getting third shots in the U.S., even though the government doesn’t recommend it at the moment. (One San Francisco hospital is offering a supplemental shot to residents who got the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.) |
| “I see it on social media all the time: people saying, ‘I was worried so I just went to the CVS and got a third dose,’” Apoorva said. But, she added, right now there’s no need — so far the “evidence tells us it is not necessary.” |
