[Excerpt From]: Omicron booster shots are coming—with lots of questions
COVID-19 vaccines get their first update since the pandemic began. Here's what you need to know about them
GRETCHEN VOGEL | SCIENCE MAGAZINE
If the benefits are limited, do we really need the new boosters?
Some scientists don’t think we do. Paul Offit, a vaccine researcher at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, was one of two members of FDA’s committee who voted against asking companies to make Omicron-specific boosters. Offit doesn’t dispute that the new vaccines will have some benefit but doubts it’s worth the additional resources. Current COVID-19 vaccines still prevent the most severe outcomes, Offit says, and if the goal is to stop infections, even updated vaccines will have little impact.
That’s because the incubation period for COVID-19—the time between getting infected and becoming infectious to others—is too short, he says. Unless levels of neutralizing antibodies are already high, the immune system doesn’t have time to recognize and fight off the virus in the few days between exposure and when someone sheds enough virus to infect others. Diseases such as measles or rubella have a 2-week incubation period, which means a vaccinated person’s immune memory cells can ramp up production of enough antibodies in time to prevent them from passing it on.
That’s why measles and rubella vaccines can halt the spread of those diseases, Offit says, whereas in the case of COVID-19, “even if 100% of the population were vaccinated and the virus hadn’t evolved at all, vaccines would do very little to stop transmission.” [READ FULL ARTICLE]
PREVIOUSLY ON AFROPERSPECTIVES:
GREAT NEWS FROM AFRICA! Doctors say: "The Omicron variant is the vaccine we failed to make."
THE JOURNAL NATURE: Had COVID? You’ll probably make antibodies for a LIFETIME
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