US officials have announced that they will prepare to offer booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine starting the week of September 20 for healthy, immunized people.
The boosters will be available to individuals eight months after the completion of their second dose.
Federal health authorities first announced in mid-August that they would allow immunocompromised people to get special, additional doses of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines.
“It’s almost certain that most people will eventually need to get booster shots or additional doses of the vaccines.”
Increasingly, research shows many people who have weakened immune systems haven’t been able to receive full protection from their COVID-19 vaccines. Unlike healthy people who’ve been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, immunocompromised people’s bodies may not produce enough protective antibodies after two doses of the COVID-19 vaccines. This could leave them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, especially as more contagious variants circulate in a community.
Emily Landon is an infectious diseases specialist and hospital epidemiologist as well as the executive medical director for infection prevention and control at University of Chicago Medicine and one of Chicago’s preeminent experts on the coronavirus.
Here, Landon explains what you should know about COVID-19 vaccine booster shots:
The post What you should know about COVID-19 vaccine booster shots appeared first on Futurity.
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