The launch of COVID-19 vaccination is in full swing in the United States. Millions of people have already been vaccinated, and states are beginning to expand their eligibility.
Although experts hope that we will reach the immunity of the herd by autumn, if vaccinations continue at our current pace, there are questions about the need for booster vaccinations and how long our current immunization will last. According to health experts, this largely depends on several factors: how long vaccines guarantee immunity to infection and whether emerging variants reduce the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Amplifiers are not yet a reality, but they may be on the way.
At this time, the conversation about the need for booster photos for COVID-19 is still slightly hypothetical, although vaccine manufacturers and researchers are already Preparing for the possibility of testing boosters and vaccines, adjusting for known variants of coronavirus.
“Right now, the most important thing right now is vaccinating people,” he said Waleed Javaid, director of infection prevention and control at the Mount Sinai Downtown Network in Manhattan.
Javaid explained that the faster the population is vaccinated, the less opportunities the virus has to circulate and move. Mutations are what lead to more contagious variants, which may require an updated vaccine.
Current COVID-19 variants – such as variant B.1.1.7 discovered in the United Kingdom, variant P.1 found in Brazil and B.1.351 strain discovered in South Africa – are more transmissible and could lead to a the fourth wave of cases.
However, so far vaccines have been shown to be somewhat effective against variants. The positions may not be as strong against the current new strains, but they are not useless.
“We have not seen any option to completely evade vaccination,” Javaid said.
Experts largely define the effectiveness of the vaccine as preventing severe infections, hospitalization and death. While mild infections can occur after vaccination, this is not the main cause for alarm. Jennifer Lighter, an infectious disease specialist and a hospital epidemiologist at New York University’s Langone Health, compared the symptoms to a common cold or mild flu. “All vaccines prevent hospitalization and death: that’s the bottom line,” Lighter said.
Scientists are still measuring how long current COVID-19 vaccines offer immunity.
We also do not yet know how long vaccines guarantee immunity against coronavirus. TD injections (tetanus and diphtheria), for example, require a booster every 10 years. If we start seeing new cases of COVID-19 appearing in the population between six months and five years from now, then that would be a good reason for a booster, Javaid said.
We are currently using antibody testing as a marker of the immune response. But we need more time to study the population’s response to vaccines before we can sufficiently assess the duration of immunity.
Making a booster shot, if and when we need it, will not last as long as the original vaccines.
With Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech photos, vaccine manufacturers are able to update existing vaccines to address new strains. Usually that trial lasts about three months. Both companies are already Testing a booster shot and working on a shot that targets COVID-19 mutations, but have not committed when and when they will be needed by the public.
Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses an adenovirus – part of the common cold – to send a message to the body’s cells and trigger an immune response against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. J & J’s vaccination studies took place when some of the new variants were circulating, so experts are not concerned about its effectiveness when it comes to hospitalization or death. The company’s CEO told CNBC in early March that he was working on software that would address new and emerging variants if needed, but did not provide many other details about what that software might be.
COVID-19 will probably not disappear completely.
Although there has so far been a vaccine response to known variants of COVID-19, Lighter noted that the virus is likely to continue to mutate.
“COVID-19 doesn’t go away,” she said. “Looking at the long term, it will feel like the flu. The flu moves every year, we have to have a vaccine every year, but it is totally manageable, because there are treatments and vaccines, and people have immunity. ”
At this time, we do not know if or exactly when we will need vaccine adjustments, in the form of boosters, to target ongoing variants. But given the fact that we will continue to see new mutations, scientists may eventually need to create updated photos to provide protection against further strains of the virus. The question is that after six months, a year or five years.
Experts are still learning about COVID-19. The information in this story is known or available from the date of publication, but the guidelines may change as scientists discover more about the virus. Please check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the most up-to-date recommendations.