If you're at high risk of severe disease from COVID, don't think twice, say doctors and infectious disease researchers.
Who should definitely get a COVID booster? Robert Wachter, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. "It will markedly increase your protection against getting very sick for about a year or so," says Dr. But for many people, the hope is the COVID shots can be annual, like flu shots. Exactly how long depends on a variety of factors including your immune system, your health, your age and your prior exposures to both the vaccines and infections. The boost in protection against severe disease – the kind of scary symptoms that can send you to the hospital – should last a lot longer. It should also make you more likely to get a more mild case if you do get sick. You'll get a boost in immunity within about two weeks after getting the shot that could reduce your risk of coming down with COVID – and that protection will likely last for a few months. Shots - Health News Unraveling long COVID: Here's what scientists who study the illness want to find out 3. But a spate of recent lab studies suggest it is no better at evading immunity than other circulating variants, and the new COVID boosters should still provide protection. When it first emerged, BA.2.86 set off alarms because it had so many mutations. That includes BA.2.86, a new strain that authorities began tracking in August. Though new variants have emerged since the FDA developed the booster, the updated shots are still "very closely matched to all the circulating strains," says Andrew Pekosz, a virologist and immunologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Will they protect against the newest COVID variants? They're updated versions of the existing Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines and have been formulated to target a relatively recent omicron subvariant called XBB. The new boosters are a much closer match to currently circulating variants than prior vaccines, say federal health officials. Shots - Health News CDC advisers back broad rollout of new COVID boosters
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