Time to reconsider COVID-19 booster shots?

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Why it may be time to reconsider giving everyone COVID-19 booster shots By Alice Park Senior Health Correspondent Now that we’re in the third year of the pandemic, some infectious disease experts are calling for a rethinking of who should get booster doses, and which boosters might be most useful. I spoke to Dr. Paul Offit, who wrote an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine making this case. Offit is a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine advisory committee, which guides the agency about which vaccines to approve. During advisory committee discussions in late August 2022, Offit raised questions about how much more protection the latest Omicron booster—which targets both the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and the Omicron BA.4/5 variants—provided compared to the original. On Sept. 21, the FDA ended up approving the booster anyway. In the NEJM, Offit lays out his reasons for why health officials should reconsider recommending that latest booster for everyone: Scientists have found that people boosted with the new Omicron shot did not produce dramatically higher levels of virus-fighting antibodies than people boosted with the original vaccine. The Omicron booster is protecting people from getting hospitalized or dying from COVID-19—but may not be reducing spread of the virus or new infections appreciably. Older people and those with weakened immune systems benefit the most from the Omicron booster, but for otherwise healthy, younger people the impact isn’t as dramatic, since Omicron typically causes only mild illness in the latter. READ THE STORY.

What else to read Why Rapid COVID-19 Test Results Are Getting More Confusing By Jamie Ducharme At-home COVID-19 test results can be hard to interpret Read More » 9 Ways to Squeeze in More Steps Every Day By Angela Haupt Stop texting the people you live with, and get (or borrow) a dog Read More » Many Long COVID Symptoms Resolve Within a Year, Study Suggests By Jamie Ducharme At least among people who had mild COVID-19. Read More » Can You Really Catch Up on Lost Sleep on the Weekend? By Jamie Ducharme Here's what experts think about the value of sleeping in on weekends. (Originally published in 2018.) Read More » Why Businesses Must Stop Disregarding People With Disabilities By Paul Polman and Rhiannon Parker Addressing the wants and needs of consumers and employees means prioritizing thorough inclusivity. Read More »

An Expert Voice "As a population, we're all becoming toddlers right now. We're all moving from baby phase to toddler or adolescent phase where we're like, okay, now we can start dealing with this." —Dr. Michael Mina, chief science offer at eMed, talking to health correspondent Jamie Ducharme about our immunity to COVID developing as the pandemic progresses.

If you were forwarded this and want to sign up to receive it daily, click here. Today's newsletter was written by Alice Park and edited by Elijah Wolfson.

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