A fourth COVID vaccine "should be made available to all of us", Associate Professor Nathan Bartlett believes.
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"By the time it gets to winter in June and July, it'll be four to five months since most people have had a third shot," said Dr Bartlett, of HMRI and the University of Newcastle.
"We know their immunity will be waning again. Within two months, you start to see waning."
Dr Bartlett said new variants were emerging and "there's recombinants popping up".
Omicron strains have combined to form the XE variant, and a combination of the Delta and Omicron variants has been dubbed "Deltacron".
Anything we have at our disposal to reduce the chances of infection and disease will be beneficial
- Associate Professor Nathan Bartlett
"Borders are open, people are travelling, viruses are moving around," he said.
"Anything we have at our disposal to reduce the chances of infection and disease will be beneficial. We're seeing huge impacts of people being ill with this virus."
For the rollout of "winter boosters", the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) recommended a fourth dose only for adults aged over 65, residents of aged or disability care facilities, people over 16 who are severely immunocompromised and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged over 50.
Some others, though, have found it easy to get fourth shots simply by saying they were immunocompromised.
"Right now, they're prioritising the most at risk. But in a couple of months, you'd want to be opening that up to the wider population as our immunity wanes," Dr Bartlett said.
He said those who had been infected with COVID would be "good for eight weeks at least before they'd need to think about getting another vaccination".
"An infection boosts you a bit like a vaccine, but probably not as reliably as a vaccine," he said.
Nonetheless, concerns remain that current vaccines and infection-acquired immunity won't stop COVID from transmitting.
As such, scientists are looking to intranasal vaccines in the long-term fight against the virus.
"If we really want to stop this virus, we need to do better at stopping infections. That means approaches that stimulate immunity in the nose and throat, where the virus is getting in. We're waiting on those, they're in clinical trials," Dr Bartlett said.
He is optimistic that these so-called second-generation vaccines and other intranasal treatments that fight viruses will be available next year.
"Then we'll really have a chance of stopping this virus from getting from person to person. And once you do that, you've got a chance of getting it out of the population," he said.
He also urged people to get the flu vaccine, particularly with less immunity around for viruses that haven't been circulating as much.
"There's probably other respiratory cold and flu viruses creeping in. Many people will almost certainly contract another cold virus or flu, so get your flu vaccine for sure. Any protection is better than no protection."
