SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – A new NYU study suggests the single-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine is not as effective against the Delta variant and recipients should consider getting a second shot to increase protection against the variants.
“The takeaway is definitely don’t rush out and get a booster shot,” Dr. Peter Chin-Hong said.
Not so fast, says Bay Area infectious disease experts. They say the study, which has not been published or reviewed, is flawed.
They looked at blood samples in a lab, not human response to COVID.
“My biggest question with the study is it doesn’t deal with humans in terms of how humans deal with disease, it is just a virus on a plate. And I think until we have the data these studies are not really convincing to me,” Dr. Chin-Hong said.
Infectious disease experts say another problem is that the vaccines trigger various responses to battle COVID-19 and only one type, antibodies were looked at in this study.
“What it didn’t look at was another important arm of our immune system which is t cells, that appears to be a comparable and very important part of our immune response to all viral infections including the one that causes COVID,” Dr. John Swartzberg said.
Medical experts don’t rule out the possibility that at some point the data will support J&J recipients getting a second shot, but they say that data will have to suggest they are getting breakthrough infections causing them to be hospitalized
“With any of the three vaccines that are approved we are not seeing people get hospitalized or dying, when we see it it is really unusual,” Dr. Swartzberg said.
Medical experts also point out that the decision to give people a booster will not be decided based on one single study.