Are booster shots necessary?
The short answer is it's unclear. We do know, and this is very early evidence, that antibody levels tend to fall in the weeks and months following a second shot. And this is obviously complicated by the highly infected Delta variant. But what's important to remember is that antibody levels aren't the only part of our immune system that give us protection.
So we have other, sort of, immune system soldiers like B-cells and T-cells that all together help provide that protection. At the moment, scientists don't quite know what level of antibodies, what level of B-cells and T- cells are necessary to give us that protection that we're looking for.
And so just because of the antibody levels may be falling, that does not mean that our bodies won't remember how to deal with this enemy if we come across it in the weeks and months following the second shot.
In the UK, for instance, we do have data that suggests that antibody levels are falling in fully vaccinated people in weeks and months after their second dose. However, it does not appear to have directly translated into higher hospitalizations and death in that category of people.
Of course the argument for people who are immunocompromised or are classes as clinically vulnerable is far stronger, to that's because after getting two shots, they don't get the optimum level of protection as the rest of us do, and so it does make sense to top up that already, sort of, lower level of protection that this category of people may have gotten post their first two shots.
Does a booster shot need to be the same as my vaccine?
No, not necessarily, and that's pretty much what scientists are trying to figure out.
The general, sort of, prevailing hypothesis is that given that different vaccines teach the immune system to recognize the enemy in this case the virus in different ways, if you provide different doses of the different vaccines, that might potentially lead to a more diverse, broader, sort of, immunity.
Early data from the UK suggests, for instance, that one dose of AstraZeneca followed by one dose of Pfizer vaccine does bring additional benefit. And obviously that has implications for the third potential dose.
But much like everything else, the jury's still out, the science is still ongoing, and we don't really have a good answer for this yet. On the safety side, there are worries, and early evidence from the UK suggests that mixing and matching jabs does tend to increase the rate of sideeffects and so that is something that policymakers will have to contend with.
But what about vaccine equity?
There's the broader, sort of, bigger argument, which is moral. Essentially, like the WHO has argues, while wealthy countries, consider third shots, there are many parts of the world where even the most clinically vulnerable haven't had the opportunity to have their first shot.
Mike Ryan ;
"We're planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who have life jackets, while we're leaving other people to drown".
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And experts then suggest that this signals that third shots might be necessary. And obviously that might take away those shots that are so badly need in poorer countries even though we know that the evidence base for a third shot is still unclear.
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