Will I need to get a COVID-19 booster shot? – WHYY

How long will it take to produce and approve boosters?

The good news is that the MrNA vaccines are very amenable to updating, Bushman said.

You just change the nucleic acid sequence to match that of the new variant, and voil, youve got the new vaccine, he said. So that can happen very fast on an engineering level. Then, theres the whole testing and approval process. But testing can probably go pretty quickly, and similarly, approval. So, I think we probably could implement a new vaccine quickly. But it would be much better if we didnt have to.

Vaccines, mask-wearing, and physical distancing help fight against new variants, Bushman said.

So, if we can keep those up and suppress the levels of virus, that reduces the chances of the virus mutating. If theres a lot less virus, a lot less transmission, there will be a lot less viral evolution, he said. So, we have it in our power to strongly influence the situation by getting vaccinated, wearing masks, and engaging in all the precautions weve been hearing about.

If were suppressing the virus in the U.S., but the virus is taking off in South Africa, or Brazil, or wherever, that could be an incubator for new variants that could break through the vaccines we have, so no one is safe until everyone is safe, Bushman added. We need to finish the job here, vaccinating and suppressing the virus, and bringing that to the rest of the world. We need to try and squelch the virus everywhere.

The city of Philadelphia announced Tuesday that all COVID-19 restrictions, with the exception of face mask requirements, will end on June 11. In Pennsylvania, all restrictions are set to lift across the state on Memorial Day, with the exception of face mask requirements. New Jersey is lifting most of its restrictions on May 19, and Delaware on May 21.

I can see the argument both ways. You want to reward people for getting vaccinated, you want to have something to look forward to. However, I think we really have to respond to events, Bushman said.

Things were looking good in India several months ago, until the virus soared because people didnt take enough precautions, and a new variant may have contributed, and now theyre having 400,000 new infections a day. So, it can change very fast. So I think an important thing is to say, We really need to keep up with precautions, we will loosen up gradually in response to data, but should things ever look to go in the wrong direction, were clamping down again.

Moderna said in a statement that during its clinical trial of its booster, people typically reacted similarly to their second dose of the vaccines. Common side effects included pain at the injection site, fatigue, headache, as well as muscle and joint pain.

Bushman said hes optimistic that COVID-19 might be an easier problem to solve, because it copies its genetic material more accurately than the flu virus does.

And theres something else going on with the flu, he said.

The genetic material comes in a lot of little pieces, and there are lots of different kinds of flus in the world. So, if two different viruses go in one cell, they can reassort all these little pieces of genome, and you can get something that has four segments from virus one or three segments from virus two, or something like that, so you can get massive changes in the sequence of the flu virus, he said. That doesnt happen with SARS-COV 2 because of that reassorting antigenic shift its called. So, Im hoping SARS-COV 2 will be easier to vaccinate against.

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Will I need to get a COVID-19 booster shot? - WHYY