Time to reconsider COVID-19 booster shots?

Now that we’re in the third year of the pandemic, some infectious disease experts are calling for a rethinking of who should get booster doses, and which boosters might be most useful. I spoke to Dr. Paul Offit, who wrote an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine making this case. Offit is a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine advisory committee, which guides the agency about which vaccines to approve. During advisory committee discussions in late August 2022, Offit raised questions about how much more protection the latest Omicron booster—which targets both the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and the Omicron BA.4/5 variants—provided compared to the original. On Sept. 21, the FDA ended up approving the booster anyway.

In the NEJM, Offit lays out his reasons for why health officials should reconsider recommending that latest booster for everyone:

READ THE STORY.