As soon as health officials made it clear that the world would need a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, they needed to know if people could mix doses of vaccines made by different manufacturers.
In the first study to provide results on such cross-dosing, researchers say that it’s safe for people who received one of the three vaccines available in the U.S. to get a booster dose of another—and that they found early evidence that certain combinations might generate stronger immune responses than others. The study was published on a preprint server and not yet peer-reviewed, and came on the same day that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) convened a panel of outside experts to review Moderna’s request to authorize a booster shot. The FDA and Centers for Disease Control have issued an emergency use authorization for Pfizer-BioNTech’s booster, but is currently reviewing data on the safety and efficacy of booster from Moderna and J&J.
For the mix-and-match study, the researchers studied 458 people who were originally immunized with Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Johnson&Johnson-Janssen vaccines and then randomly assigned to get a booster dose of one of the three, about four to six months later. It wasn’t designed to directly compare immune responses of one booster to another, but rather to give researchers a broad sense of whether overall, the antibody responses produced were similar across all three boosters—for example, to see whether people who initially got Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine produced similar immune responses after getting an additional dose of a Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or J&J’s shot.
time.com/6107027/covid-vaccine-mix-and-match/
Future headline
“Get all 3 vaccines. Twice. Go catch covid. Twice. Gargle with motor oil. You will be safe for 3 months. Guaranteed. Almost”
h/t Fugazi World