Charlotte And Yale Scientists Find Annual Boosters Best To Fight COVID
While COVID-19 boosters have been found to protect against infection, hospitalization and severe illness, the waning of their protection has led to uncertainty about when it is most appropriate to get an additional booster shot.
Now, a team of scientists led by faculty at the Yale School of Public Health and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte has an answer: Updated boosters administered on an annual or biannual basis greatly reduce the long-term risk of infection from endemic COVID-19.
Not getting an updated booster shot, they found, triples the risk of future infection compared with annual boosting.
“It is important to remember that we are in an arms race against an evolving virus,” said Alex Dornburg, assistant professor at UNC Charlotte, who co-led the study. “As we have now seen with previous vaccines, we need to continue to update boosters to match the circulating strain. We already administer annual vaccines for influenza, and the mRNA technology would make updated vaccinations possible on an even more accelerated timescale.”