Will Covid-19 boosters be required regularly?
There has been much discussion over whether repeated boosters will be needed to maintain protection against Covid-19.
Prof Paul Digard, chair of virology at the University of Edinburgh in the UK, said “there probably won’t be much call for a regular booster” unless significantly different variants emerge.
“Protection from virus infections and vaccination will give us some reasonable protection for a while. I’m not expecting to be queuing up for a fourth booster in the next few months,” he said.
“Even if your antibody titres [concentrations] have waned enough that you can be reinfected, you still have memory response; you will be able to mount a good immune response faster and better.”
Some experts, such as Prof Locker, think that governments may vaccinate populations periodically, as is the case against influenza in some countries.
“In the long term, provided vaccine coverage is increasing, we’ll probably move into a pattern of annual vaccination that covers us against circulating variants,” he said. “But this is only going to be efficient if we have good vaccine coverage worldwide.”