This episode of TWiV is focused on COVID-19 vaccines and antibodies: who should get boosters, whether a variant matched mRNA vaccine is superior to a historical vaccine, and how the interval between vaccination and infection influences the quality of the antibody response.

Vincent and Brianne review the need to better understand T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection to better inform public health decisions, and how IL-1 and IL-1ra are important regulators of the inflammatory response to RNA vaccines.

A TWiV trio reveal the isolation of novel paramyxoviruses from rodents and bats in Arizona, and isolation of naive B cells from seronegative donors that produce germline encoded antibodies which engage the receptor binding domain of SARS-CoV-2, variants of concern, and related sarbecoviruses from bats.

Shane Crotty returns to TWiV to review the immunology of COVID-19, including differences between infection and vaccination, increased breadth of antibodies after infection followed by vaccination, the roles of T cells, and whether booster vaccinations are needed.

Paul and Theodora return to TWiV to explain their research on determining the number of neutralizing epitopes on the SARS-CoV-2 spike that are recognized by antibodies, and engineering of a polymutant spike with twenty amino acid changes that demonstrates the high genetic barrier to escape from convalescent serum.