The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most dreaded disease for mankind. Ever since the pandemic has struck everyone has known for sure that it is not going to eradicate any sooner. Therefore, with numerous attempts and trials and tests, the globe finally reached a milestone of developing vaccines that are immune to the virus.

However, due to its biological nature, the virus is expected to mutate and in case of coronavirus, it has mutated quite rapidly over multiple times.

Many antibodies that had been developed after vaccination in the body seemed to have waned or decayed after a period of time, researchers suggest. Also, there is a chance that someone who didn’t respond to a particular vaccine (for whatsoever reasons) might be prone to that particular virus mutant.

Keeping in mind the above adversities, doctors and virologists have found out a new solution to this problem of antibody effects getting waned- Vaccine Boosters.

Many countries have decided to give these boosters to their vaccinated population. Companies have already been testing boosters, including an additional shot of their own vaccines and revamped boosters designed against the variant.

However, proper guidelines and timeline for giving boosters are still under research and discussion, at various conferences around the world.

Why is there a need for such boosters?

Vaccines that have been developed till now have been successful in tackling down various mutants of the virus but still it has been reported that immunity gets weakened after a certain period of time, thus, reducing the efficacy of vaccines.

Boosters, as the name suggests, are expected to increase the immunity period.

Countries like UAE, UK, Bahrain, Thailand, US and India have been working in this direction.

“The booster shot is critical to inducing a ‘hyper-antibody response’, necessary to enhance protection against the evolving virus”

Some of the key points of vaccine booster shots:

The need for vaccine booster shots in India arose after the low coverage of second dose of vaccines. This means that the country will face a more prolonged outbreak than other nations.

Also, the mutant of Delta variant is rising above the immunity level vaccinated with the second dose in India, hence making them more prone to the disease.

Thus, all the above reasons are justified to give immunity boosters to the population for increasing the efficiency.