For most young and healthy people, “your benefit from a booster is limited,” Durbin says.
If you got a two-dose mRNA vaccine and you’re not currently eligible for a booster, you may never need that third dose.
“There could be new variants that arise, that could come into the United States, in which case we may need a booster,” Durbin says. “But only time is going to tell us that.”
“They are still highly effective,” she said of the vaccines during a COVID webinar Wednesday. “The purpose of a vaccine is not to prevent every single symptom. … For the vast majority of people in the United States a booster is not indicated.”
But whether that’s the case depends on how well we control the ongoing pandemic, according to Durbin. The best way to ensure that we don’t need them soon or don’t need to get them regularly is to stop the disease from spreading—and the best way to do that is to vaccinate the unvaccinated, both in the U.S. and around the world. The more unvaccinated people there are, the more chances there are for new variants to emerge.