Commentary: Better COVID-19 booster vaccines are needed if we want people to take them - CNA

BETTER BOOSTER VACCINES ARE POSSIBLE

The 2023 boosters don’t have the original strain – they are monovalent and aimed at the Omicron sub-variant XBB.1.5, which was dominant earlier in the year. Many scientists say this is a big improvement.

A study published last month in Nature showed that repeat exposures to Omicron through infection or Omicron-only booster shots can start to override the immune imprinting that has our immune systems stuck on the extinct original version of this virus.

Peking University researcher Yunlong (Richard) Cao, who headed the study, said exposure to Omicron generates what are called naive B cells, and over time these become tuned to fight Omicron. After two exposures, the body is better able to fight off future exposures to Omicron. 

As a caveat, he said, this study involved subjects in China who were very rarely exposed to the virus before Omicron, and who got a different kind of vaccine called an inactivated virus. Similar studies that followed people who got mRNA shots saw no overriding of the imprinting. 

Cao said the mRNA vaccines are more immunogenic than the ones used in China, which can make them more powerful but might render the imprinting effect stronger too. It might take people in the US and elsewhere more exposures to Omicron-only boosters or infections to retune their immune systems toward the new version of the virus – though the virus will continue to evolve as well.

The take-home message, he said, is that booster shots can have long-term impacts – and that we need to start thinking about how to battle this disease in the long term. We have multiple approved vaccines to explore and new ideas are coming from research labs all the time. We’re not ready to settle into a yearly boosting schedule with mRNA shots.

If people are sick and tired of anything, it’s getting COVID-19. If we had a new shot that kept us COVID-19-free for at least a year, more people would be willing to get it. 

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2023-12-20 22:00:00Z
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