COVID-19 vaccinations are at a critical juncture as companies test whether new approaches like combination shots or nasal drops can keep up with a mutating coronavirus—even though it’s not clear if changes are needed.
FILE - A health worker administers a dose of COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic in Reading, Pa. COVID-19 vaccinations are at a critical juncture as companies test whether new approaches like combination shots or nasal drops can keep up with a mutating coronavirus — even though it’s not clear if any change is needed.
Despite success in preventing serious illness and death, there's growing pressure to develop vaccines better at fending off milder infections, too — as well as options to counter scary variants. Updating the vaccine recipe to match the latest variants is risky, because the next mutant could be completely unrelated. So companies are taking a cue from the flu vaccine, which offers protection against three or four different strains in one shot every year.
But there's a looming deadline. FDA's Dr. Doran Fink said if any updated shots are to be given in the fall, the agency would have to decide on a recipe change by early summer.For the average person, two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine plus one booster — a total of three shots — “gets you set up” and ready for what may become an annual booster, said Dr. David Kimberlin, a CDC adviser from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Even if someone who's vaccinated gets a mild infection, thanks to those memory cells “there's still plenty of time to protect you against severe illness,” said Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The CDC is developing advice to help those eligible decide whether to get an extra shot now or wait. Among those who might want a second booster sooner are the elderly, people with health problems that make them particularly vulnerable, or who are at high risk of exposure from work or travel.It’s hard for a shot in the arm to form lots of virus-fighting antibodies inside the nose where the coronavirus latches on.