It’s too early to tell whether those now getting COVID-19 booster shots will one day need a second or third booster, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci said during a White House COVID-19 Response Team press briefing.
“We do not know at this point, but we are collecting data that hopefully will inform us about that,” Fauci said when asked by a reporter if people will need to get a fourth vaccination shot six months after their booster or if boosters will eventually be given every six months in order to maintain a defense against the virus.
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Fauci had shown charts earlier in the briefing that displayed the waning efficacy of the original vaccine regimens over a six-month period, which he said demonstrated the need for boosters.
Whether or not the same thing will happen with the booster shots remains to be seen, he said. The hope is that the interval between the second dose of an mRNA vaccine and the third will give the immune response a chance to mature, which Fauci referred to as “affinity maturation,” and provide longer-lasting protection from the disease.
“I think there’s a reasonable chance that the durability for protection following the third dose will be longer than the durability of protection that I just showed in one of my slides,” Fauci said. “If that’s the case, we may not need to get boosted every six months or so.”
But Fauci didn’t rule out the possibility of a fourth shot or rotating six-month vaccination intervals.
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“If so, we will address it,” he said. “We will find out the data, we will make it public, and we will act accordingly.”
Earlier in the briefing, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said that 1 million boosters were given every day over the weekend, with 36 million total boosters given to date, and that 95% of the federal workforce is compliant with the pending vaccine mandate.
Zients also stressed that those who are unvaccinated should get their first dose, noting that unvaccinated individuals are 14 times more likely to die of COVID-19 if they haven’t received the jab and are nine times more likely to be hospitalized.
