AstraZeneca vaccine recipients have ‘mixed emotions’ over getting mRNA boosters early
Global News
It's a mix of welcome and worry from double-dosed AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine recipients as provinces begin to lay out their plans for booster shots.
The announcement in some provinces that Canadians fully inoculated with AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine will be among the first to get a booster dose has been welcome news for some recipients — but is leading to a new round of worries for others.
Chief among those worries are the ramifications of mixing that viral vector-based shots with an mRNA vaccine for their third dose, which could include barriers to international travel and other paperwork-related headaches.
“I’m going to say I have mixed emotions about it,” said Sam Glass, a culinary arts instructor from Thornhill, Ont., who loves to travel and is worried that getting a booster — which he still plans to do — may impact his lifestyle.
For Glass, it’s another instance of feeling like he got the lesser deal as vaccinations rolled out across the country earlier this year.
“I guess the analogy was, when I got AstraZeneca, I got a Chevrolet,” he said. “And when people got Pfizer or Moderna, they might have gotten a Cadillac. They’re all reliable, but you’d be lying if you said you didn’t want the Cadillac.”
That sentiment was further enforced last week, when the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) said recipients of viral vector vaccines like AstraZeneca should be among those prioritized for booster doses.
The decision was based on emerging evidence that those vaccines may offer waning immunity over time.
One study out of the United Kingdom found protection against the Delta variant fell to less than 50 per cent 20 weeks after the second dose of AstraZeneca, compared with nearly 70 per cent for Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine.