COVID-19 booster shot needed within 9 to 12 months, doctor says

Experts are now saying people who have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19 may need a booster shot in nine to 12 months.

Originally, they said it would be at the one-year mark, but Dr. Jill Roberts with the University of South Florida said once you’ve made it to a year after being fully vaccinated, you can run the risk of getting COVID-19 at that point as the antibodies from the vaccine wear off.

You need to protect yourself from that loss of antibodies and the booster shot will also stop people from getting infected by variants of the virus.

“A variant results because a virus when it replicates, it makes mistakes. So the type of virus that coronavirus is, it makes a lot of mistakes and when it replicates itself, it doesn’t do it perfectly and the result is a mutation or a variant,” Roberts said.

She said this shot will continue to stop mutations and the booster will better protect people, and vaccines can also be updated to target any new variants.