The FDA has now authorized boosters for kids aged 12 to 15, meaning everyone over 12 is now eligible for a booster.
As more and more people get their third shot, some are wondering when it will be time get the next one, or the one after that.
"We have to begin to change our entire approach to vaccination," said Dr. Warner Greene, a Senior Investigator at Gladstone Institutes at UCSF on KCBS Radio's "Ask an Expert" with Holly Quan and Dan Mitchinson.
"I think we have to realize that it may be impossible to sustain a sterilizing immunity, which is what the boosting shots do," he said.
Research has shown that the effects of the booster fade pretty quickly, said Greene. For those who are high-risk, that could develop serious illness with infection, regular boosting might be necessary. For the rest of the population, a more standard, yearly vaccine regiment might be the best solution.
The majority of vaccines don't actually prevent infection, they prevent the disease, or the illness, brought on by the infection, he said.
"I think that we're learning that these RNA vaccines, while effective in preventing infection, they can only do so for a certain period of time," said Greene.
We'll just wind up "chasing ourselves" with boosters over and over again, he said, which isn't the best option for the general population.
The current booster that most people are receiving is likely not to last as long as people would have hoped.
"There was hope that the third shot would lead to an incredible state of immunity that would last for many, many, many months, if not a few years," said Greene. In reality, our "sterilizing immunity," is probably going to disappear in a few months.
More boosters will likely pop up as time goes on, but there isn't a 4th shot available in the United States just yet.
The end of the pandemic is likely to come when a very weak version of the virus "takes over," said Greene, an omicron-like virus that exists in an endemic sense, like the flu, in our society.
"Our life will be much more normal," he said.
