As far as I know, three doses of the HBV vaccine are administered after birth. Why is a booster not required years later to maintain immunity to HBV? I ask this because HBV is said to have genomic hyper-variability in regions including the surface protein. Would someone's lifetime not be long enough for a mutant to occur which escapes the vaccine immunization? Or has such a mutant simply not occurred yet?
HBV is a dsDNA virus and evolves very slowly compared to RNA viruses such as HIV and influenza. The genotypes of HBV have evolved over more than 60,000 years as HBV was picked up from apes by humans (or coevolved in both apes and humans for far longer) and spread around the world by human migrations. Boosting is done not for viral diversity issues, but to renew the immune response which fades with time after immunizations.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/754316_4
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At whatever stage(s) of life, the antibody situation can be checked via taking of a blood sample. Then consideration can be given to what to do (if anything) as regards re-immunisation. Development of antibodies can also be monitored, if desirable, during the course of the prescribed series of inoculations. Such as if one is a medical doctor, for example, who deals with patients. Nice to know what the situation is, psychologically. It depends on how fussy, i.e. careful, you want to be.
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