Experts say most people don’t need Covid-19 vaccine booster
‘Governments would be better served to focus on immunising the unvaccinated’
Covid-19 vaccines work so well that most people don’t yet need a booster, an all-star panel of scientists from around the world said in a review that’s likely to fuel debate over whether to use them.
Governments would be better served to focus on immunising the unvaccinated and to wait for more data on which boosters would be most effective and at what doses, the authors, who included two prominent US Food and Drug Administration experts, argued in the medical journal The Lancet. They based their assessment on a wide range of realworld observational studies as well as data from clinical trials.
“None of the studies has provided credible evidence of substantially declining protection against severe disease,” the authors wrote.
Delta variant
There could also be additional side-effect risks if boosters are introduced too soon or too broadly, they said. Most countries with ample vaccine supplies are debating whether to allocate doses for booster shots to prop up immunity and potentially help stop the spread of the more infectious Delta variant. The US plans to roll out booster shots starting September 20, though the proposal still needs sign-off from the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Scientists are by no means unanimous on the topic of boosters. Even a small reduction in efficacy against the spread of Covid-19 can strain a health-care system, and “there is therefore no ‘one size fits all’ approach,” said Azra Ghani, chair in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London, who wasn’t involved with the review.
Shares of vaccine makers fell after the review was published.