Boosters, ½ Doses and Mix-Matches - Microbial Minutes

Is Mixing-and-Matching safe and effective? Which COVID-19 vaccine is best? And do differences in dosage and wait times between doses impact vaccine performance?

The announcement that people will be given the option to choose a different vaccine for their booster than they received during primary vaccination - also known as heterologous booster vaccination, or mixing-and-matching vaccines - has resurfaced familiar questions about whether any one vaccine (or vaccine combo) is superior to the others. Now, 9 possible vaccine combinations are available in the U.S., and many are trying to decide if mixing-and-matching is safe and effective, and if so, which booster they should choose.

In this Microbial Minutes, we begin to address some of these questions by taking a look at the preliminary study used to inform FDA heterologous booster recommendations.

Sources:
• https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2113468?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed
• https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01420-3/fulltext
• https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01115-6/fulltext
• https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.10.21264827v2
• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41596-020-0394-5
• https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.17.21265101v2
• https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/10/pfizer-moderna-dose-which-vaccine-best/620501/

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