You may need extra COVID-19 vaccine doses to combat more infectious variants, a former Obama administration official says
- A former Obama administration official said Monday that people may need COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to combat new, more contagious virus variants.
- "We all suspected that this would not be our only set of shots," Dr. Kavita Patel said, adding that people could have a booster every few years.
- Patel, a physician in Washington, DC, worked as director of policy for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement.
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People may need additional COVID-19 vaccinations or booster shots depending on the spread of more infectious coronavirus variants, according to former Obama-administration official, Dr. Kavita Patel.
In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Patel, who worked as director of policy for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement, said the number of COVID-19 vaccines or booster doses people would need "depends on what we see with these strains and how much they escape the immune system."
So far, three coronavirus variants - found in the UK, South Africa, and Brazil - have triggered huge outbreaks and a surge in cases in those countries. The variant first identified in the UK is more contagious, and potentially more deadly, than the original virus strain, and has been found in nearly a dozen US states.
The first known US case of the variant found in Brazil was reported in Minnesota on Monday.
The variant first found in South Africa has been shown in early lab studies to sometimes avoid antibodies, produced by the body to fight off infection. It has not yet been found in the US.
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Patel, a physician in Washington, DC, said that "we all suspected that this would not be our only set of shots, whatever we're receiving this year."
"I think it points to at least, potentially, something every several years or a booster," she said.
But Patel said that the worst of the pandemic was hopefully behind us, adding that hospitalizations, deaths, and positive test rates were coming down. "It looks like we've kind of gone past the crest or that peak of that post-holiday surge that we were really worried about.
"Could we see something more dire soon to come? Very low likelihood given the fact that we do have two incredibly effective vaccines available."
Patel pointed to vaccine manufacturers Johnson & Johnson and Novavax, who will "hopefully add to our armament of vaccine technology."
US pharmaceutical giant Merck said Monday that it had stopped developing two potential COVID-19 vaccines because they failed to generate a strong immune response.
Patel said the announcement didn't come as a surprise, and that the drug company's withdrawal wouldn't have a significant impact.
But Patel warned that vaccine supplies could become "constrained" if the US doesn't approve Johnson & Johnson and Novavax's vaccines in the upcoming months.
More than 25.3 million Americans have been infected with the novel coronavirus and more than 420,000 have died from it, according to the New York Times coronavirus tracker.