The Covid-19 vaccine was thought to offer enough protection against the coronaviruses a year ago.
Israel has begun giving fourth doses to some high-risk groups. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded eligibility for boosters to adolescents on Wednesday, and backed away from describing anyone as fully vaccined because two shots no longer seem adequate.
One's vaccine status will be up to date, or not. Many Americans are wondering where this ends. Are we required to have booster shots every few months?
Scientists are reluctant to predict the future because of a virus that has exceeded expectations. In interviews this week, nearly a dozen people said that trying to increase the population every few months is not realistic. It doesn't make sense.
Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University, said that there are better ways to give vaccines. She said that other strategies could get us out of the situation.
It's probably not a good idea to convince people to line up for shots every few months. More than 70% of American adults are fully vaccineed, but just over a third have opted for a booster.
Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona, said that this doesn't seem to be a sustainable long-term strategy.
There is no data to support the effectiveness of a fourth dose. People with impaired immune systems might benefit from a fourth dose.
Booster shots help to prevent infections and may help relieve pressure on the health care system by temporarily slowing the spread of the virus. The experts said that Americans should get a third dose as soon as possible.
Preliminary studies show a decline in antibody levels just weeks after a third dose. The boost doesn't uniformly prevent Omicron, which is less vulnerable to the body's immune defenses.
It is very difficult to stop the virus with that amount of antibody, said Crotty, who works at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California. An Omicron-specific vaccine might do a better job now that the bar is higher.
Moderna, Pfizer-bioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson all said that they are testing vaccines that target Omicron.
It doesn't make sense to keep boosting against a strain that has already gone. I would wait for an Omicron-based one if you were going to add one more dose.
If the goal is to boost immunity against Omicron or future variants, other tactics would be better than a vaccine.
The pan-coronaviruses vaccine is designed to target parts of the virus that would not change very quickly.
The current vaccines could be combined with boosters of oral or nasal vaccines, which are better at preventing infections because they coat the nose and other mucosal surfaces.
Allowing more time between vaccine doses might strengthen immunity.
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There is a line for coronavirus testing. 73 percent of American adults are considered fully vaccine free, but just over a third have opted for a booster shot. Saul was a writer for The New York Times.
According to Nussenzweig, people who are vaccine free are doing well in the hospital. He said that Omicron made it clear that preventing infections is not a priority.
Regular boosters might make sense if the vaccines prevented the spread of the virus. What is the point with Omicron? Dr. Nussenzweig spoke. The goal is to keep people out of the hospital.
The nation's top Pandemic adviser spoke about the importance of preventing infections last fall. He has been saying that hospitalizations matter.
Booster shots must be timed to a variant in the population in order to prevent infections. Many people who got a third dose early in the fall were left vulnerable to Omicron because the immune boost had already subsided.
People are usually told to get a vaccine against the flu before the winter season starts. If the coronaviruses settles into a flulike seasonal pattern, we could give boosters before the winter to protect ourselves.
Lessons from the flu season suggest that frequent vaccinations are not helpful. Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, said that it may not make sense to give the flu vaccine twice a year. There is a turning point when the initial doses get better and better.
He thinks it will be difficult to get high levels of vaccinations.
Some experts are concerned that getting boosters too often may be harmful. It could backfire in two ways.
The first possibility is that the immune system is exhausted by repeated stimulation and stops responding to vaccines. Dr. Bhattacharya said that they are not seeing weird memory cells that are indicative of anergy.
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A vaccine clinic in San Ramon, Calif., last month.
The second worry is called "original antigenic sin." The immune system's response to the first version of the virus is tailored to it, and its responses to subsequent versions are less powerful.
Omicron is different from previous versions of the virus because of more than 50 changes.
Dr. Amy Sherman said that there were enough clues that it could be a problem. We have seen evolution in a short period of time.
The rapid evolution of the virus is due to its access to a lot of human hosts. The vaccines might need to be updated if the cases continue to accumulate at the current rate.
If the epidemic slows in most parts of the world, it may limit the chances of the virus emerging in a different form. Helping other nations immunize their populations is an argument for helping other nations.
Some experts said that Americans would be better served by using strategies other than vaccines to control the spread of the virus. In the case of pneumococcus, immunizing children indirectly protects older adults.
Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, said that improving the air quality in schools would limit the spread of the coronaviruses.
She said that if we go back to how we were, kids could be driving a lot of transmission.
The Biden administration needs to define what it is trying to accomplish before it can adopt any strategy.
It would take a different approach to prevent infections.
Natalie Dean is a biostatistician at the University of Atlanta. Whatever the future holds, it needs to be clear what the goal is.
