Australians need a COVID-19 boost ahead of a potential winter wave, experts are urging, warning that a monovalent vaccine targeting the dominant JN.1 variant is unlikely to be ready in time for the colder months.
The latest NSW Health respiratory surveillance report released on Thursday shows the JN.1 variant now accounts for almost all cases of COVID-19 in NSW.
The World Health Organization reported last week that nearly all circulating COVID variants were derived from JN.1 and recommended that future vaccine formulations should target the variant that has rapidly displaced all others since it was first declared as a variant of interest in December.
Credit: NSW Health
While these updated vaccines may be available for the Northern Hemisphere winter, Deakin University epidemiologist Professor Catherine Bennett said it was more likely to be the vaccine Australians receive “in the year coming or in six months.”
“The point is, don't wait for that next magical boost,” he said. “It's good to see that we have that ability now to keep monitoring what's going on with the virus [variants] but … for now, the main goal is to try to get ahead of a wave with your vaccination to give you time before your risk of exposure increases in the community.”
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Bennett said current vaccines still worked well, but a “monovalent” immunization (focused on a single strain) would be more effective at creating an antibody response to the virus and any future variants that evolve.
“It's more like the annual flu shot where we try to build our vaccines to be closer to the circulating strains,” Bennett said. “You just want to try to get as much effectiveness out of your vaccines as possible, especially for people who are really still relying on vaccine-induced immunity as their primary protection.”
Associate Professor Stuart Turville, a virologist at the Kirby Institute in Sydney, said the rate at which JN.1 had spread and evolved to better evade the body's immune system showed it would be difficult to predict what future variants should be directed by the new vaccines.
