“Booster vaccine” to mitigate the threat of “emerging COVID-19 variants”: A short review

Vaccination is the time-tested strategy in controlling the infectious diseases. The global scientific community has agreed upon the role of mass vaccination, as a strategy in abating the ongoing COVID pandemic. By immunizing the at-risk population vaccination aims not only to break the chain of spread of disease but also reduces the severity of the disease, hospitalization, and mortality. In the wake of waning immunity and emerging variants, spreading the world over its time to review the evidence of a third dose as a booster.When deciding on the booster dose, availability of the vaccine, type of vaccine, circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants, and emerging variants have to be taken into consideration. Booster dose as the name suggests boosts the waning immunity of the population and when implemented as a public health measure has the potential to increase the antibody level of the population beyond a threshold, thereby mitigating the spread of COVID infection. Cross-protection is likely to the newly emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants by virtue of the enhanced immune response. However, to develop robust recommendations, investigations on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of booster doses vaccines are needed in the context of rapidly spreading variant, the omicron.