COVID-19 vaccine makers’ requests to authorize another round of booster shots have prompted a debate splitting the pharmaceutical companies and vaccine experts who say a fourth jab is not yet needed.
Pfizer and partner company BioNTech, as well as Moderna, the makers of the two-dose mRNA vaccines, have each requested expanded use authorization from federal regulators to administer another round of booster shots to adults, bringing the total number of shots to four.
“The issue of a fourth dose is not on the current agenda because two doses and a booster are working very well,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who also sits in on the FDA vaccine panel’s discussions about recommending vaccines. Still, the Israeli study results were not a ringing endorsement for extra doses, according to Dr. Andy Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“This has a lot of experts concerned that perhaps if we keep boosting with the original design to the spike protein over and over again, the more this virus drifts and changes, we may be less likely to recognize it or not respond as well to new versions,” said Tulane University vaccine expert Dr. Lisa Morici.
Boosting too often with the same or a similar formulation also may not be necessary thanks to the long-lasting immunity afforded by “memory” B-cells and T-cells, which wane very slowly. Those memory cells can stand guard against serious infection for a sustained amount of time.
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