It is too early to tell whether people will need to receive a Covid-19 vaccine each year to protect against infection, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN's Anderson Cooper during the company's town hall Wednesday evening.
"Anderson, to be honest with you, we don't know. We really don't. You could say we might have this or we might require this, but we don't know," Fauci said. "One of the things I'm very interested in and my colleagues, is that when you get a boost, the booster shot for example with an mRNA or a Pfizer, do you not only elevate the level of antibodies to a high level but do you induce a degree of affinity maturation which is a big word to mean that you really get the immune response to get a much greater breadth and a much greater strength so that we maybe don't have to boost every eight months, nine months. It may be we get a durability of immunity. Or maybe not, and if it is not, we'll have to deal with it depending upon how the outbreak and the global pandemic evolves."
Fauci added: "So the honest answer is we don't know what's going to be required. I hope we get a durability protection from the boost that we won't have to be chasing all the time against the new variant. But that just remains to be seen."