Yes, COVID-19 boosters use the same recipe as the original
shots, despite the emergence of the more contagious delta variant. The vaccines
weren’t tweaked to better match delta because they’re still working well.
The vaccines work by training your body to recognize and fight
the spike protein that coats the coronavirus and helps it invade the body’s
cells. Delta’s mutations fortunately weren’t different enough to escape
detection.
The increased protection you might get from a booster
adjusted to better match the delta or other variants would be marginal, says
Dr. Paul Goepfert, director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Manufacturing doses with a new formula would have also
delayed the rollout of boosters.
Moderna and Pfizer are studying boosters tweaked for the
delta and other variants to be ready if one’s ever needed. Health authorities
would have to decide if and when a vaccine formula swap would be worthwhile.
“What we don’t know,” Goepfert noted, “is if you have a
delta vaccine compared to the regular vaccine, does it actually work better in
preventing transmission or asymptomatic infection?”
The U.S. has authorized booster doses of the Pfizer, Moderna
and Johnson & Johnson vaccines for certain people, and a few other countries
also are using boosters of those shots or other COVID-19 vaccines. -AP
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