From the Yahoo article, vis-a-vis vaccinations targeting BA5, and the future of broad protection against coronaviruses in general and Covid in particular:
The appropriate response to the near-term BA5 exigency:
That means no human trials — just animal trials and laboratory tests. That might sound scary to some, but regulators already use the same accelerated process to update the flu vaccine each year — and there is no mechanism by which minor mRNA tweaks will make revised Pfizer and Moderna shots any less safe than the billions of doses administered so far worldwide.
And the long-term solution:
it was welcome news Wednesday when Pfizer and BioNTech announced that they plan to “start tests on humans of next-generation shots that protect against a wide variety of coronaviruses in the second half of the year”
These include “T-cell-enhancing shots, designed to primarily protect against severe disease if the virus becomes more dangerous,” and “pan-coronavirus shots that protect against the broader family of viruses and its mutations.”
T-cell protection has always been the big gun in protection against severe disease. We may have to live with getting infected and risking “long covid”, but we hopefully won’t have to greatly fear death from it.
Pan-coronavirus shots are the holy grail, but I would anticipate these will take longer to develop and prove out in human trials. T-cell enhancing shots will probably be available first.
All through the city. Libraries have to close because it tears through the staff. I wanted to go out to eat to a restaurant a few weeks ago and luckily I checked yelp on the way and they were closed on a friday night. Checked on their insta and sure enough… Covid closure.
Some concerns have also been raised about whether the at-home tests are still accurate in the face of the new Omicron sublineages, including BA.4 and BA.5. [Emily Volk, MD, president of the College of American Pathologists] said it’s believed the tests are still very effective, as manufacturers have focused on including parts of the virus that are more stable in their tests.
“At some point it is possible that the virus will mutate so much that we can’t detect it with our current tests,” she acknowledged. “That’s certainly feasible down the road, but right now, we’re not seeing that.”
If I read this correctly, and if this is in fact the case (i.e. that there are unique parts of all of the covid variants, at least so far, that are stable vis-a-vis mutations), then it would seem that those parts of the virus would be good candidates for the next generation of mRNA vaccines, rather than constantly focusing on the spike protein that constantly mutates.
What’s the fallacy in that line of thought? Or maybe that’s actually one of the things the developers are working on for a pan-coronavirus vaccine.
Gaps in booster coverage have left the United States more exposed to deaths during Omicron waves. More than half of vaccinated Americans have not received a booster. Three-quarters of those eligible for a second booster have not gotten one.
This spring, people age 50 and older who had received a single booster were dying from Covid at four times the rate of those with two booster doses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As if the “vaccine-hesitant” weren’t already sufficiently confused, there are now two forthcoming updates to the original mRNA vaccines. One will become available earlier, targeting “Original Omicron”, but the other will probably be better (it says here) being as it targets the current “Omicron Version BA4/5”. Unless a worse variant comes along before it’s released. And the Original Original shots from last year, which targeted the no-longer-out-there Original Covid-19 are now considered more-or-less obsolete. But get a fourth shot of it anyway – asap – if you’re overly old. Oy vey.
There is little doubt that with the current turnaround times due to clinical trial timelines we will see worse variants before a BA5 vaccine is ready. There are recent reports of BA2.75 in India which has some quite unusual mutations and it is spreading quite fast over there.
Read the article again. The FDA would prefer that this fall’s boosters be tailored to BA.4 and BA.5, but they might go with the OG-Omicron shots that Moderna and Pfizer have already developed if the revised vaccines would delay things too much. They’re not going to distribute both in the US.
I find the article confusing on that point. It wouldn’t seem unreasonable for Moderna & Pfizer to release the OG-Omicron vaccine that’s already been developed (and in production) and then later switch to a newer version that’s tailored to BA.4/5, if the latter is going to be delayed for an unacceptable amount of time.
Well, yes, of course. What’s not clear is what the FDA (and CDC) will choose to do in the near term, meaning the next several months, to try to manage covid over this fall and winter.
They’re discussing whether to approve for the coming fall round of boosters the original Omicron vaccines Moderna and Pfizer already have or revamping them for BA.4 and BA.5. No suggestion of doing both. No suggestion of anything before fall.
They would have to do both as only the manufacturing process for BioNTech and Moderna for a BA5 vaccine if they would start today (and they haven’t started yet as capacity is used for the BA2 vaccine) will take about 4 months (and that doesn’t include any clinical studies which will take another 3 months - and it is not clear if the FDA is indeed willing to skip those for covid vaccines in the future)
They want a variation on the seasonal flu model. There’s little chance they’ll approve vaccines for more than one set of target variants within say six months. The public is too confused already.