How long should I wait to get a bivalent booster if I recently had a shot or contracted Covid?
In August, the Food and Drug Administration authorized updated booster shots for people who are at least two months out from their last Covid shot (whether it was the original vaccine or a booster). You might want to wait longer between shots, though. While an advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to recommend the same interval between doses, several members voiced concerns.
Doctors and immunologists said that, in general, people should wait four to six months after immunization to get a booster. Likewise, if you were recently infected with the coronavirus, you might want to wait that same amount of time before getting another shot.
That’s because your body will probably not generate much of an immune response so soon after a previous encounter with the virus, Aubree Gordon, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, said. “Your immunity level is so high that you’ll just neutralize immediately the antigen that’s being produced — you kind of reach a ceiling,” she said. “You don’t have that much higher to go.”
And keep in mind that once you do get the new booster, it typically takes around one to two weeks for your antibodies to kick in, Dr. Gordon said.
