There is talk of possibly needing, somewhere down the road, “booster” shots of COVID vaccine that are targeted at variant(s) of concern for which the original COVID vaccines do not provide adequate protection.
Is it appropriate to call these “boosters”? I’ve always understood booster shots (e.g. Tdap) to be a repeat dose of the same vaccine you received X years prior, administered to reestablish a flagging level of immunity.
It’s a grey area, I think you could argue it either way, but I think the close similarity justifies use of the term booster.
The primary vaccines do generally produce a response that’s somewhat effective against all the variants, so if you think of it in terms of the overall response, the response is boosted. And a third modified shot does quantitatively boost the response to the earlier strains, as well as improving the response to the newer variants.
On the other hand, the reason for any improved protection against variants is likely at least partly attributable to new clones with greater specificity for the variant. So in that sense it’s not just boosting something, it’s adding something new.
I suspect from a public health policy perspective it’s better to describe it as a booster - people might be frustrated with the notion that they have to be vaccinated again with a “new” vaccine.
We need to get flu shots every year because the virus keeps re-inventing itself, and I’ve never heard anyone refer to flu shots as “boosters”.
I’d say it depends. If all it does is inoculate you against variant strains, I can agree it’s not really a booster. But if it does that as well as help top up immunity on those for which it has wanted, I’d still call it a booster.
Do note that boosters don’t increase immunity for everyone. I know that most people were already immune after their MMR shot(s) as children. But they added a booster shot at the middle school level because it does wane or may not have completely taken in some people.
Since I had a possible severe adverse reaction to my original MMR shot, I was allowed to get tested to see if I was still immune by over 90%. I was, so I didn’t have to get the booster.
FWIW, influenza mutates more rapidly than SARS-CoV-2. I don’t have much expertise in influenza but I think the changes in the predominant 'flu strain each year are usually more substantial. Coronavirus has a proofreading enzyme that results in a low rate of mutation during genome replication. The coronavirus variants involve only small changes.
While true, they have since said that the virus is mutating faster than they expected. It seems quite likely that there are enough selection pressures for it to eventually escape our current vaccines–hence the need to specifically try to inoculate against the variants.
The biology of the coronavirus is no different than expected. As @Riemann stated, the presences of a proofreading mechanisms in coronaviruses substantially slows down their mutation rates relative to other RNA viruses.
What was unexpected are the opportunities to mutate with so many people infected and people who have the infection for a long time. Once new cases drop and cases are resolved faster, these opportunities will decline.
Also, a note on “booster”. The article @Riemann posted mentions a booster shot of the original vaccine and a new shot of a variant-specific vaccine. Both shots improved immunity against variants. However, the variant-specific shot did a better job.
Since variant-specific shots are easy to make with the RNA vaccines, new rounds of shots may only be variant-specific ones. Natural immunity is looking like it’s lasting awhile so many scientists are saying that a true booster with the old vaccine will be unnecessary.
(Bolding mine)
So we have a third option:
I agree that “vaccine” is problematic as far as public health messaging, and so is “booster,” not only because it’s inaccurate but people are notoriously bad at recalling when they last did something. (“Why do I need a booster? I just got the vaccine a few months ago,” when it’s been a lot more than a few months.)
“Covid shot” might be the best option because it avoids both those problems and also jibes with the terminology already used for another disease fighting shot we get over and over.
Moderna is actually developing a combo Covid booster + seasonal influenza vaccine.
Now that they have the technology for mRNA vaccines figured out, are they going to make mRNA vaccines for flu too? Or stick with the old chicken egg recipe?
I’m willing to guess that carton will have the words “polyvalent vaccine” or “multivalent vaccine” on it, and the name will have some thing like ~3~ or ~5~ in it, to indicate the polyvalency.