Australians may have to receive up to three jabs a year, data suggests

While the world focuses on Pfizer and Moderna to moderate the symptoms of COVID-19, weekly data published by UK’s Health Security Agency on Christmas suggests that even boosters offer lower protection against the Omicron variant.

The protection against Omicron in comparison to the Delta strain, remains low across all periods post infection.

The research included 147,597 Delta and 68,489 Omicron cases in the UK. While there was up to 90 per cent protection from heavy symptoms of the Delta following immunisation for up to nine weeks, for Omicron efficacy drops to 30 per cent and lower.

“Results should be interpreted with caution due to the low counts and the possible biases related to the populations with highest exposure to Omicron (including travellers and their close contacts) which cannot fully be accounted for,” the UK Agency said.

Similarly, Israel has already implemented a second booster to follow the three necessary treatment with the US considering following the same protocol.

Jaya Dantas, a professor of international health at Curtin University, said it was still early days for the understanding of the efficacy of the vaccinations but it appears that its the way to go for Australia, too.

“It appears that there might be a need for regular boosters… “You might need boosters, say maybe two a year or three a year,” Dantas said, noting that Australians may have to receive two or even three Covid jabs each year to maintain immune system protection against the virus based on how analyses go in countries that have already implemented a mandatory second booster.

“We have vaccine inequity,” Dantas added, “so many parts of Africa have not even had one single dose, or they’ve had very low levels of a single dose”.

Finally, Dantas said that elderly people are more likely to warrant a triple annual dose.

Meanwhile, the majority of Australian medical experts are holding a more conservative position clarifying that results beyond the 12-week dataset would be needed to get a longer term picture on the efficacy of additional boosters given that new variants keep appearing; we currently have 11 variants.