Pandemic restrictions may be easing across the country, amid declining Covid cases — but experts say the virus is going to stick around for a long time.
That likely means you'll need another Covid booster shot sometime in the future. The big question is: When?
There have been mixed reports>The first booster shot is still working
Right now, the country's vaccines and boosters from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — which were designed to fight the original SARS-CoV-2 strain — are doing a "great job" protecting against severe disease, says Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist and associate professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Their protection holds up even against variants like omicron and delta, he says.
That's largely due to the T cells that vaccines help your body generate, says Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. T cells are specific white blood cells that activate>The value of a second booster shot
In a clinical trial released>Many people don't have their first booster yet
New daily Covid cases have dropped dramatically from their record high of more than one million on January 3. As of Wednesday, the seven-day average of daily new cases in the U.S. is down to 57,825, according Johns Hopkins University data.
As a result, some people are deciding that their booster shot is unnecessary. According to new CDC data, fewer people have been getting boosters in recent weeks: The seven-day average for booster shots was about 149,000 on Feb. 19, down from one million in early December.
But the booster remains crucially important, says Hannah Newman, director of infection prevention at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She urges people who haven't yet gotten boosted to do so, and soon.
"What we know is that the three-dose series is really what is protecting people most effectively right now, even those who got omicron," Newman says. "We don't know what the future holds, and it's certainly better to get that shot and start to have that antibody response sooner rather than later."
