8. Is there any chance a booster shot distributed now will need to be redesigned for a future variant?
“Absolutely,” Dr. Englund said. “And a booster dose is the time we may want to consider re-engineering a vaccine.”
9. Do you think the FDA/CDC limitations on who is eligible for a booster was in any way influenced by the World Health Organization call for prioritizing shots for the unvaccinated in lower-resource countries?
“This is absolutely still a global problem,” Dr. Piltch-Loeb said. “We need to get more vaccine to more countries and more people as soon as possible, because if there’s anything we’ve seen about the variants it is that ... they can come from all different places.”
“That being said, I think that it is unlikely to change the course of action in the U.S.,” she added, when it comes to comparing the global need with the domestic policy priorities of the administration.
Dr. Atmar was more direct. “No,” he said. “The WHO recommends against boosting of anyone. The U.S. decisions about boosting those in this country who are eligible are aimed toward addressing perceived needs domestically at the same time that vaccines are being provided to other countries.
“The philosophy is to address both ‘needs’ at the same time,” Dr. Atmar said.
10. What does the future hold for booster shots?
“Predicting the future is really hard, especially when it involves COVID,” Dr. del Rio said.
“Having said that, COVID is not the flu, so I doubt there will be need for annual boosters. I think the population eligible for boosters will be expanded ... and the major population not addressed at this point is the people that received either Moderna or J&J [vaccines].”
Kelly Davis contributed to this feature. A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.