A new US government study shows it isn’t risky and may even be a good idea to mix, rather than match, COVID-19 vaccines when getting a booster dose.
The study also shows mixing different kinds of vaccines appears to spur the body to make higher levels of virus-blocking antibodies than they would have gotten by boosting with a dose of the vaccine the person already had.
If regulators endorse the study findings, it should make getting a COVID-19 booster as easy as getting a yearly influenza vaccine.
“Currently when you go to do your flu shot nobody asks you what kind you had last year. Nobody cares what you had last year. And we were hoping that that was the same — that we would be able to boost regardless of what you had [previously],” said the study’s senior author, John Beigel, MD, who is associate director for clinical research in the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
