NBC News medical contributor Dr.Nahid Bhadelia said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “MTP Daily” that COVID-19 booster shots will likely become annual like the flu shot.
Discussing reports the Biden administration is planning to recommend booster COVID-19 vaccine shot for most Americans, anchor Chuck Todd said, “Does the announcement, though, because I know there were studies out of Israel that showed this sort of slow erosion of efficacy, one way to describe it. It seems to make it inevitable we are staring at near-annual shot in some form, a la the flu shot. It appears this doesn’t end. We’re not going to get rid of COVID. It is going to be endemic, which means, sounds like it means annual shots in some form or another, right?”
Bhadelia said, “Yeah, we have seen that with other viral diseases. Seeing the drop in antibody response then also seeing there are clinically more cases that appear the longer you are from those it does mean boosters might be in our future.”
She added, “There’s also another reason. The virus is evolving, more it transmits, where there’s so much global transmission, we may be looking at future boosters to also potentially address new variants. This is the thing that worries me. Only 16% of the world is currently vaccinated. If this transmission continues, it can come up to us in the form of threat of new variants as well.”
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