Immune imprinting is a tendency of the body to repeat its immune response based on the first variant it encountered through infection or vaccination when it comes across a newer or slightly different variant of the same pathogen.
Recent studies have pointed out that bivalent boosters made to counter both the Omicron strains and the original COVID-19 strain — don’t generate significantly greater antibody responses than an additional dose of the original mRNA vaccines. Scientists observed that the ineffectiveness of the bivalent or variant-specific boosters might be due to immune imprinting.
