Questions remain about the longevity of immunity provided by COVID-19 vaccines.
NORFOLK, Va. — The number of COVID-19 vaccinations is rising in Virginia, but health leaders say there are still many unknowns about the vaccines themselves, particularly the longevity of immunity.
“At this point, we don’t know how long vaccine immunity will last," Dr. Danny Avula, Virginia's vaccine coordinator said in a media telecall Friday afternoon. "We don’t know if it’ll last eight months, 12 months, or beyond.”
The CEOs of both Moderna and Pfizer have recently indicated a third "booster" COVID-19 vaccine shot could be available as early as later this year. While both companies' vaccines have an efficacy rate of over 90 percent when both doses of the 2-shot vaccine are administered, a booster shot is intended to add a level of protection against emerging coronavirus variants.
Dr. Avula says it's not immediately clear yet when Virginia would move into this phase of vaccine distribution but predicts that it might not be until 2022, and that the rollout would be significantly different compared to current vaccination efforts.
"It’s hard to speculate on the timeline because so far: six months in, immunity still looks really strong," Dr. Avula said.
To date, more than 3.5 million Virginians are considered fully vaccinated according to VDH data, making up just under 42 percent of the population. Nearly 4.5 million have at least one dose of the vaccine, pushing the number of people with at least one dose in the state to over 50 percent.
According to Dr. Avula, booster shots would become more necessary if COVID case numbers rose, and getting shots would rely less on mass vaccination efforts and more on traditional avenues like primary care physicians and pharmacies.
“I don’t know if we’d need the same degree of mass vaccination infrastructure. When we did that, nobody had any protection. Nobody had been vaccinated, only people who actually contracted COVID had any kind of immunity, but now as we're talking about the possibility of boosters, people will have some degree of immunity," Dr. Avula said.
May 22, 2021 at 05:57AM
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Virginia's vaccine coordinator: COVID-19 'booster' shots may not be needed until 2022 - 13newsnow.com WVEC
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