“People who have been vaccinated do really, really well in terms of hospitalization,” said Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York. Omicron has made it clear that preventing all infections is a lost cause, he added.
If the vaccines have prevented infection and spread of the virus, regular boosters may make sense. “But with Omicron, what’s the point?” dr. Nussenzweig said. “The endgame keeps people out of the hospital.”
Last fall, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s chief pandemic advisor, repeatedly on the importance of preventing symptomatic infections. But he also says in recent days that hospital admissions really matter.
To prevent infections, booster shots must be perfectly matched to the circulation of a variant in the population. For example, many people who received a third dose early in the fall were vulnerable to Omicron because the immune boost had already worn off.
The coronavirus pandemic: important things to know
In general, people are told to get vaccinated against the flu just before the virus starts circulating in the winter. If the coronavirus takes on a seasonal pattern that resembles a seasonal pattern, as it seems possible, “can you imagine a scenario where we just give boosters every year before winter,” said Dr. hensley.
Lessons from flu season also suggest that frequent vaccination is unlikely to help. Giving the flu vaccine twice a year “has diminishing returns, so it may not make sense to vaccinate so often,” said Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong. “For the first doses that people get, the responses get better and better, but then there’s a turning point.”
“I think it will be difficult to get a high uptake with more frequent vaccinations,” he added.
Some experts have raised concerns that getting boosters too often — as some people do on their own — can actually be harmful. In theory, there are two ways it could backfire.
