An uptick in COVID-19 cases and the fast-approaching new school year have many people wondering when they should get their next booster. The short answer, according to experts: not quite yet — you will be a lot better off if you wait another month or two.
In June, an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the next COVID vaccine formulation target the omicron XBB.1.5 variant.
Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax are now working to update, test and mass-produce their vaccines, which will then need to be officially authorized by the FDA. Experts estimate that shots will be available to the public by late September or early October.
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“For most people right now, it seems to me waiting makes more sense,” said Dr. Paul Sax, the clinical director of the division of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
There are two main reasons to hold out for the updated vaccine. First, it will be a better match for the variants that are currently circulating.
The majority of the coronavirus strains infecting people right now are either descended from, or related to, XBB.1.5, so the decision to target that variant with the vaccine “was about as good as you could imagine for the moment,” said Trevor Bedford, a professor in the vaccine and infectious disease division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
The vaccine will most likely also provide some protection against EG.5, which recently became the dominant variant in the United States, accounting for about 17% of current cases.
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Dr. David Boulware, a professor of medicine specializing in infectious diseases at the University of Minnesota Medical School, added that because the new vaccine is a better match for the current variants, he is “somewhat optimistic” that it will help prevent not only severe disease but also infection.
“Once you’re boosting with the variant that is closest to what’s actually circulating,” you will most likely regain some protection against infection, he said.
Antibodies wane over time, and protection is highest during the first three months after an infection or vaccination.
“Case numbers are increasing now, but they’re not at exceptionally high levels,” Sax said. “I can’t imagine, though, that they won’t go up again in November, December or January, as they did every single year in the past three years.”
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In case you need a little extra motivation to get the new booster, vaccination is the only proven way to shorten a case of COVID, Boulware said. In a study published last year, he found that people who got COVID within six months of receiving a shot “had less severe disease and shorter duration of illness.”