By: Yzora Lopez
As the Omicron variant continues to rapidly spread throughout the country, public health officials are urging people now more than ever, to go and get the booster vaccine.
In order to receive the booster, you must first be aware of what vaccine you received and the date when you received your second dose. According to the CDC, if you received the Moderna Covid vaccine, you are able to get the booster six months after your second dose and if you received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, you are able to get the booster five months after your last dose.
Dean of the Yale School of Public Health, Dr. Sten Vermund stated that, “For the exact same reason people got vaccinated to begin with, which is to reduce the serious consequences of infection, they should get the booster, because we now have new strains circulating and the higher immune response, the higher the antibody levels, the greater the protections is from these new strains.”
Vermund continued on with, “we are not so bothered by infection. There are lots of viruses that infect us and don’t cause us too much harm. What we want to do is avoid serious consequences of infection, not infection itself. It’s great if we avoid a symptom infection. That’s one less nuisance that we have to worry about in our lives. But it’s not so serious to get infected if you are thoroughly immunized.”
While the extra booster vaccine has been said to lift antibody levels, it also recruits new immune cells.
Booster shots of mRNA coronavirus vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) increase antibodies by 10 times.
Experts are saying that people who receive the booster are less likely to get infected than those who do not receive it. The more people that remain unprotected, the more variants will rise.
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