Dr Amy Crawford-Faucher Discusses the Future of Vaccination for COVID-19

Amy Crawford-Faucher, MD, vice chair of the Primary Care Institute and Department of Family Medicine at Allegheny Health Network, discussed recent new World Health Organization research on vaccine protection against COVID-19.

Transcript

A report from the World Health Organization found that people are having long-lasting protection against COVID-19 when they have been both vaccinated and infected up to 12 months after infection. How do you think that changes how COVID-19 is addressed by the primary care physician for both adults and children?

So I think that, clearly, the COVID situation has been evolving now for 3 years. And so that kind of fits our anecdotal evidence that if you had all the vaccines and the COVID infection that you seem pretty well protected. And if you get COVID again it tends to be mild. I certainly have patients who've gotten COVID, 3 times so far, and they're fully immunized and then folks who still haven't gotten it at all. So I do think, because so much of the population has had a COVID infection, that if we can maintain our COVID vaccination rates and booster rates, that if this evidence continues to bear out, I think that's really exciting, because I think that's how we get to a level of herd immunity that can make COVID eventually look more like flu. And could help kind of add credence to, you get your flu shot once a year, you get your COVID shot once a year.