Should one wait for a new Omicron vaccine or get your next booster now amid BA.5’s surge?--experts comment

Should you wait for an Omicron vaccine—or get your next booster now? With Omicron subvariant BA.5 on the rise, many Americans are debating how best to protect themselves. Here's what experts say. Fortune

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With Omicron-specific vaccines perhaps only months away, Americans may be weighing whether to hold out for those doses or receive their first or second booster now. “It would depend on a person’s underlying health condition,” says Siddharth Sridhar, clinical assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong’s department of microbiology. “People with medical conditions that put them at risk of severe COVID should get the existing vaccine as a second booster.”

For months now, experts have advised vaccine recipients, especially those with underlying health conditions, to receive the doses they're eligible for as soon as possible rather than consider other factors, like vaccine brand or current COVID case counts.

In March, Bob Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, tweeted that those trying to time their second booster with a surge in cases were like investors timing their share purchases with a stock market rally—a strategy “which rarely works.”

"It is important to follow the guidelines that are released and to take boosters as soon as you are eligible for them," says Ashley St. John, associate professor at Duke-NUS Medical School, citing data that shows a second booster reduces both the likelihood and severity of breakthrough cases. "Those who are eligible to take a booster should do it now," she says.

Some experts argue that the calculus is different for younger and healthier people. In the U.S., Americans under 50 without compromised immune systems don't yet qualify for a second booster. And this pool of people is already well protected from severe disease so long as they received their first booster.

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