BUFFALO, N.Y. — Wednesday's announcement from federal health leaders left people with a lot of questions.
A bunch of people sent 2 On Your Side some great questions about the booster shots to ask Dr. Nancy Nielsen, who is a familiar face on our 5:30 p.m. Town Hall. She's the Senior Associate Dean for Health Policy at the University at Buffalo's medical school.
On Twitter, Roni asked if the dates are strict. You are supposed to get your booster eight months after your second dose. She says that is in late November for her, but she will be traveling and wants to know if she can get her booster early.
Dr. Nielsen says don't plan on getting it early, that wouldn't be helpful. The vaccine should be easy to get, and she says if you're traveling in the United States, you should be able to get it where ever you are when you hit eight months, and that you should try to get it within a couple of weeks of your eight-month mark.
We also got a lot of questions from people who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. They want to know if they need a booster.
"The single-shot vaccine, studies are on-going right now, and I know this because my son is enrolled in one. They are doing studies on boosters at this moment, so we do not yet have the data on J&J to know when, or if, you will need a booster," Dr. Nielsen said.
"I fully anticipate that you will, however, so stay tuned. The recommendations right now that were released from the federal government deal only with the two mRNA vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, so stay tuned on J&J. And I do suspect that you'll need a booster, but we'll have to wait and see how soon."
People also we wondering about how the booster will impact flu shots this year.
Dr. Nielsen says get your flu shot whenever you can get it, get it over with, then get your booster eight months after your second Pfizer or Moderna shot.
Quite a few people also asked about side effects wondering if they will be like what they experienced before.
Here's what Dr. Nielsen had to say about that.
"I think you can probably expect that your response to the next shot will be about what you had before, or perhaps less. I doubt that it will be more," Dr. Nielsen said.
You can find more information about the booster shots here.