Be our guest: Health official speaks to booster vaccines

By Tom Patterson, Nodaway County Health Department administrator

The protection provided by your original COVID-19 vaccinations can diminish over time. It is the job of booster vaccines to fortify your body’s shield against infection and serious illness from the virus. Booster vaccines for COVID-19 are readily available in northwest Missouri, and recharging your immunity is as simple as scheduling an appointment with your preferred vaccine provider.

We should anticipate that booster vaccines will continue to be recommended. No one knows for sure how long. Hopefully in the future, COVID-19 will diminish to a point that we do not need to be concerned about it anymore. For the time being, we will have to live with it as an endemic disease here, with many areas of the world still experiencing pandemic level cases.

In addition to enhancing immunity, we may see future COVID-19 boosters target major mutations of the virus, if needed. A main characteristic of the mRNA vaccines is that they teach our immune systems what to look for. They provide the template and our immune system mounts a response. This feature could be an advantage in dealing with major alterations of the virus in the future.

The current vaccine is effective against current variations of the virus and continue to provide significant protection against infection, serious illness, hospitalizations and death.

A simple way to think of vaccine eligibility is to consider that the COVID-19 initial series and first booster vaccines are recommended.