Gov. Baker: Mass. may need to up booster shot availability in response to new COVID-19 variant

State, federal and municipal officials strategized in conversations throughout the weekend about how to address the new, highly mutated omicron variant of COVID-19, according to Gov. Charlie Baker.

Baker said his administration has been “in constant touch” with federal health officials and the White House and expects conversations to continue this week.

“There are three big questions,” Baker told GBH News in an interview Sunday. “The first is the transmissibility relative to previous variants. The second is the nature of the impact that it has on the people who get infected by it, which is a really important issue and a hard one for people to answer immediately. The third is, what’s the likely issue associated with this relative to the vaccines that are already available? And that question, I think, will be answered relatively quickly.”

Omicron, first discovered in South Africa earlier this month and declared a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization on Friday, has increased the call nationwide for booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines, which officials from the National Institutes of Health describe as the best bet for tackling the spread of the new variant.

“If you’re not vaccinated, get vaccinated,” Baker told GBH News on Sunday. “And if you’re eligible for a booster, get a booster. That’s your best protection.”

Booster shots were made available to all Massachusetts adults in mid-November, with reports quickly following that some Massachusetts residents have encountered difficulty finding a booster shot appointment. Baker, who said he plans to get his booster shot on Friday, said that additional doses may need to be provided.

“We have seen a very significant increase since we started talking about boosters for everybody over age 18 for whom it was available,” Baker said, “and that means we may have to up our game a little with respect to additional capacity.”

More than one million people in the state have already received their booster dose, according to Baker, “and it looks like a lot of other people are now signed up to pursue boosters themselves,” he said. “We have about 800 sites that are currently available and we may need to do more.”

Wu said that warding off the spread of the new variant was “the most important focus” for her administration in an interview with GBH News on Sunday.

“We are in a race against the clock against new variants, and the best and most important thing we can do is to continue closing gaps in vaccination, to vaccinate our kids as young as age five, to get everyone into our community health centers and other neighborhood clinics to get the booster shot,” Wu said. “We’re going to put all the resources we can to ensure everybody has a convenient, safe, accessible place to get those vaccines.”