What you need to know about the COVID vaccine that could protect against all variants
Over a year has passed by since the launch of the coronavirus vaccines around the world. Besides the two standard doses of COVID-19 vaccine, people have also received their first booster jabs. Now that several countries have authorized a second booster shot of COVID-19 vaccines for vulnerable people, many wonder how the future of COVID vaccines will unfold. With new emerging variants, vaccine protection has only diminished, pushing scientists and vaccine experts to develop a universal COVID vaccine that could protect against all variants.
The US Army-developed new COVID vaccine capable of protecting against all variants
The new single shot COVID vaccine called the 'Moonshot' has been developed by the United States Army in a bid to stamp out all coronavirus variants.
After witnessing the preliminary results of the vaccine trials, Professor Luke O’Neill from Trinity College, Dublin has described the vaccine as "impressive" and says that the findings could be made public "any day now".
The vaccine was first tested on animals. After the success, currently it is in the middle of phase I human trials.
According to professor O'Neill, "They’ve taken the RBD... and they’ve stuck it on a nano-particle, a tiny, tiny particle, made of a thing called ferritin, studded with loads of these RBDs."
"[It] went into monkeys and amazingly it protects against Sars, the original virus, SARs-CoV-2, Alpha, Beta, Delta, Omicron. It protects against all of those [virus] in monkeys.
"They're in the middle of a phase one trial in humans - any day now actually, we're going to get the data from that phase one trial soon," he adds.
How this vaccine could change the future of COVID booster shots
Given that the vaccine is authorized for use, it could change the future of the virus.
The administration of the vaccine that could potentially protect against all variants would allow people to get vaccinated just once rather than be jabbed more than once.
Professor O’Neill says that the current COVID vaccine duel is “like a deck of cards and it keeps getting reshuffled”.
"You know an immune system can recognise the same cards, basically. So far the worry would be a new deck of cards might emerge, and then we might be in more trouble, but for the moment as I say it's the same deck of cards being reshuffled basically," he says.
"At the moment the vaccines are stopping serious illness against any variant so far, but again we have to watch it," he adds.
The need for a universal COVID vaccine
Amid new emerging variants, vaccine makers are in search of a vaccine that could fight against any future strains.
Drew Weissman, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the pioneer of the mRNA technology used in Pfizer's COVID vaccine, is currently involved in one such project.
According to him, new variants are likely to appear every three or six months, which is why updating or tweaking the vaccines to tackle future strains is not a viable solution. Therefore, he and his team are now working towards developing a pan-coronavirus vaccine, a shot that could protect against all strains of the virus.
"We may have a universal vaccine in two or three years, but we're going to have to keep working on it and changing it over time to keep ahead of the virus," Weissman told AFP.
Start a Conversation
Post comment