| In this week's edition of the Covid Q&A, we look at booster shots. In hopes of making this very confusing time just a little less so, each week Bloomberg Prognosis is picking one question sent in by readers and putting it to an expert in the field. This week's question comes to us from Jeff in Long Branch, New Jersey. He wants to know about booster shots for Covid-19 vaccines. Jeff asks:
I'm assuming we'll all need booster shots at some point. Will the booster shots have to be from the same manufacturer as your original vaccine?
To start, there is still some debate about whether we will need booster shots at all.
You've probably had booster shots for other vaccines before. The idea is that some provide immunity only for a certain amount of time, while others offer lifelong protection. So in which category do the Covid shots on the market belong? Unfortunately, not enough time has passed since the first trial participants received their vaccines to answer that question.
Executives from vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna have been in the news recently speculating that booster shots will likely be needed before too long. Johnson & Johnson Chief Executive Officer Alex Gorsky has suggested Covid-19 vaccination may be necessary annually, like flu shots. But Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said she's not so sure. Perhaps drug company CEOs aren't the most impartial observers.  Preparing raw materials for messenger RNA (mRNA), the first step of Covid-19 vaccine production, at the BioNTech laboratory in Marburg, Germany. Photographer: Cyril Marcilhacy/Bloomberg "I don't actually know if we will need booster shots in the future, and I think those decisions will best be made by public health experts," says Gandhi.
She says a few things have made her optimistic that we won't actually need them. For one, variants of the SARS-Cov2 virus appear to be covered by vaccines. And we know that T-cell immunity from vaccination can last a long time.
"A similar virus to the one that causes Covid-19 caused SARS-CoV and led to the first SARS pandemic in 2003," Ghandi says. "And T-cell immunity from those who have recovered from SARS is still strong 17 years after infection."
How quickly we can slow the current spread and prevent future significant mutations of the virus may be a factor in whether we eventually need booster shots. "The coronavirus doesn't actually mutate that quickly when it's not transmitting and has a very strong proofreading mechanism to avoid mutations, so I am hopeful we won't need boosters very often—or if at all— in the future," she says. That said, getting back to Jeff's question, if we do need booster shots, it shouldn't matter which one you get.
"We as practicing physicians don't look at the brand name of the vaccine when we give boosters in the real world for a number of infectious diseases," she says. "Moreover, there is evidence that mixing and matching different vaccines may actually boost the immune response." Thanks to all of you for writing in this week! Next Sunday, we'll be answering the best question we receive again. So if you have any, we want to hear from you. Write to us at CovidQs@bloomberg.net — Kristen V. Brown | 
Post a Comment