Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said Thursday that “inevitably” everyone will need booster shots for the COVID-19 vaccine eventually because like any vaccine, its protection won’t be “indefinite.”
NBC News’s Craig Melvin asked Fauci on “Today” whether it’s “inevitable” that “in the not too distant future everyone is going to need a booster shot,” as the debate over the necessity of third shots has ramped up.
President Biden’s chief medical adviser at first emphasized that immunocompromised people “never really got a good response” from the vaccine to more robustly protect them from COVID-19.
“So for them, it’s more of getting them up to what they hopefully had gotten the first time around, but we know because of their immunocompromise, they don’t,” Fauci said, noting the decision to give boosters to others depends on if general protection falls below “a certain level.”
But Fauci responded to the original question by saying, “No vaccine, at least not within this category, is going to have an indefinite amount of protection.”
“So, in answer to your question, it’s right,” he said. “Inevitably, there will be a time when we’ll have to give boosts. What we’re doing, literally, on a weekly and monthly basis is following cohorts of patients to determine if, when and whom should get it.
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