Protection Duration of COVID-19 Vaccines: Waning Effectiveness and Future Perspective

Chunlan Zhuang; Xiaohui Liu; Qi Chen; Yuxin Sun; Yingying Su; Shoujie Huang; Ting Wu; Ningshao Xia

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2022.828806

Protection Duration of COVID-19 Vaccines: Waning Effectiveness and Future Perspective

Front Microbiol. 2022 Feb 22:13:828806. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.828806. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Chunlan Zhuang¹, Xiaohui Liu¹, Qi Chen¹, Yuxin Sun², Yingying Su¹, Shoujie Huang¹, Ting Wu¹, Ningshao Xia^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Molecular Vaccinology and Molecular Diagnostics, National Institute of Diagnostics and Vaccine Development in Infectious Diseases, Collaborative Innovation Center of Biologic Products, School of Public Health, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.
² School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
³ Research Unit of Frontier Technology of Structural Vaccinology of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines have very successfully decreased the disease risk as we know; some key information remains unknown due to the short development history and the lack of long-term follow-up studies in vaccinated populations. One of the unanswered issues is the protection duration conferred after COVID-19 vaccination, which appears to play a pivotal role in the future impact of pathogens and is critical to inform the public health response and policy decisions. Here, we review current information on the long-term effectiveness of different COVID-19 vaccines, persistence of immunogenicity, and gaps in knowledge. Meanwhile, we also discuss the influencing factors and future study prospects on this topic.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2 variant; protection duration; vaccines; waning effectiveness.

Publication types

Review