Center for Vaccine Development's Hotez: Every Three Months We Might Need Another Booster

Center for Vaccine Development director Dr. Peter Hotez said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “MTP Daily” that he believes, especially for health care workers, people will need coronavirus booster shots every three months.

Hotez said, “Now we have an added problem, and that is specific to the Omicron variant, that third booster was holding up so well for Delta, Alpha and other variants, for Omicron, it is waning really quickly.”

Anchor Chuck Todd said, “So we know that Moderna is apparently working on a booster that would tackle Omicron. Are we going to be in this sort of gap, it sounds like? I mean, look, we’re all thinking selfishly. I’m sure when people just heard what you said about the booster for health care workers, are you saying at three months from our booster, we probably need another booster?”

Hotez said, “I think so. And again, it is to prevent infection and long COVID, particularly among our health care workers. I’ll leave to the federal agencies to offer an opinion about the general population. But at least let’s protect that population because that is critical. As far as the Omicron-specific booster, we won’t have it in time for this epidemic. Also, we have other vulnerabilities. At least one or two of the monoclonal antibodies does not work against the Omicron variant. So we take that off the table.”

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