No need for Covid vaccine booster shots: Dr Gagandeep Kang

New Delhi: Speaking about when a booster dose should be administered, Dr Gagandeep Kang, professor at Christian Medical College Vellore on Tuesday, said some countries that have used inactivated, vectored vaccines or mRNA vaccines have begun to offer a booster dose to selected populations, like the elderly.

Dr Kang added, "In India (and elsewhere), we do not have any data showing that anyone who has received two doses of vaccine needs booster vaccines at this time."

Talking about Moderna and AstraZeneca she said, "Yes, the Moderna and AZ correlates of protection analysis shows that higher antibodies correlate with better protection, but there is no cut-off level of antibodies which reliably predict protection at the individual levels. Antibodies are good, but not all of the immune response."

According to Dr Kang, whether people will have more antibodies or be better protected with the booster dose is still not known. "It sounds obvious that more antibodies (abs) are better but we really don't know whether people who push up abs with additional doses will be better protected than with the level they initially made. Or that when abs wane, we need to boost to maintain above some level," she said.

Further, she explained how people with a poor immune response should get a third dose, "Who needs the booster dose and when? At the moment, we do not know. But about the FDA recommendation; it is not for boosters as much as a recognition that people with poor immune responses should get a third dose as part of their primary series of immunizations," she said.