Second boosters, yearly COVID shots (maybe) and vaccines for kids under 5: What we know
COVID-19 vaccines were a game-changer when they were released in the U.S. about a year ago.
Since then, nearly 80 percent of Americans 5 or older have gotten at last one dose. Millions have gotten booster shots. We have masked, we social distanced, we sanitized — and so many of us, after everything, still got the dreaded virus.
In the months to come, after the omicron (and stealth omicron?) surges wane, will we need more shots to help keep our families safe?
Researchers are testing 114 COVID vaccines in clinical trials, according to the New York Times. Here’s what health experts say about the vaccines in the pipeline. Some of the most critical ones will help diminish the omicron variant and offer children under 5 years old their first protection from coronavirus.
Omicron-targeted second booster
Americans could be getting second boosters as soon as March. They’re being developed by drug makers Pfizer and Moderna.
Pfizer is testing a new version of its vaccine specifically targeted towards omicron, the company announced Jan. 25. The clinical trial is is also testing a booster for safety, tolerability and immune response. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said it will be ready in March.
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said the company will have a booster targeting omicron ready in the fall, with clinical trials starting soon.
Health experts say an omicron-targeted shot could be beneficial because it’ll help wipe out the extremely infectious variant. An omicron-targeted vaccine also could help protect from future variants that are more likely to mimic omicron than previous variants.
“Eventually, it will be a prudent thing to vaccinate against omicron specifically, particularly as cases drop because of vaccination and natural immunity, because our current vaccines are active against omicron but not as active as we would like,” said Dr. Fred Campbell, associate professor and internal medicine physician at UT Health San Antonio. “We need to attack omicron to reduce or eliminate the possibility of asymptomatic infections in all but a very, very tiny number of people.”
But it’s still unclear whether a second booster will actually be needed, or whether the initial booster will offer enough protection. One study by researchers from Pfizer, BioNTech and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston found that omicron-fighting antibodies persisted four months after a Pfizer booster. More studies need to be done to see whether immunity wanes several months after a first booster, in which case the second booster would become beneficial.
We also need to know the antibody levels that are generated with the omicron-specific booster, said Dr. James Cutrell, an associate professor and infectious diseases expert at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
The data on a second booster is limited: Preliminary data in a study found that it elevates antibodies five-fold a week after the shot is administered.
How will we know that a shot is effective? It should “protect and neutralize not only omicron but other prior variants that had been seen,” Cutrell said.
When can kids under 5 years old get vaccines?
Children under 5 could start getting vaccines as early as late February. Currently, no COVID vaccines are authorized for those young children.
“The fact that kids under 5 can’t be vaccinated puts them at risk of getting infections, and it also just increases the number of people in our population where COVID-19 can spread,” Shuford said. “So we are looking forward to a time when there’s a vaccine for that population.”
Moderna and Pfizer said they are working on it.
Pfizer’s vaccine regimen for ages 6 months to 4 years has been submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for approval and could be granted authorization by late February. If approved by the FDA, it then has to be reviewed by the CDC.
“We expect to report data in children 2-5 years of age in March,” Moderna announced in January. “If the data is supportive and subject to regulatory consultation, Moderna may proceed with regulatory filings for children 2-5 years of age thereafter.”
In the meantime, Dr. Jennifer Shuford, the Texas chief state epidemiologist, says parents should make sure that everyone else in the family gets fully vaccinated and boosted so that they can protect young kids.
Will annual COVID shots become a thing?
Like a flu shot, we may need to eventually get a yearly COVID shot that is tailored to changing variants.
“If Sars-CoV-2, which is the virus that causes COVID-19, continues to mutate and form new variants that are really different than the variants that came before, then we may need to continue to update that vaccine and continue to have boosters,” Shuford said. “That’s what happens with the flu vaccine. Every year those flu viruses change a little bit, and so we update the flu vaccine every year to adapt to the changing virus.”
Or, COVID could imitate other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS that have not required frequent revaccination, said Campbell, the internal medicine physician at UT Health San Antonio.
But it all depends on further research.
“It’s hard for us to know how long the immunity from vaccines or boosters will last,” Shuford said. “Seeing how long that immunity lasts, and how well it protects against future variants, will then help us set up a pattern of whether we need booster shots on a yearly basis or not.”
“All of those data are just emerging right now, and that will help inform what we do in the future,” she said.
This story was originally published February 4, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
