Every COVID mutation has prompted new waves of anxiety about when we should get our next boosters. Omicron has been particularly scary because messaging about whether the current boosters will protect us has been so confusing. But health experts have been saying for months that a variant-specific booster probably isn’t necessary, and now new studies suggest that the boosters we already have may protect us for longer than we thought.
If you’ve been paying attention to all the booster talk, you’ve probably heard how the antibodies created by vaccines wane after a couple of months. But we may not need to worry about the next booster at all because the latest research suggests that the antibodies created after a third shot are so diverse that they should be able to protect us against Omicron and even variants that are dramatically different from the original virus, according to the New York Times.
