And here’s some more news on possible vaccine modifications to protect against new COVID variants:
Prof Andy Pollard, from Oxford University, said tweaking a vaccine was a relatively quick process and would only need small trials before roll-out.
There is still strong evidence existing vaccines work well against the mutations that have emerged.
Although their overall effectiveness may be weakened a little.
Re Pfizer (and Moderna), I found this:
As mentioned above, the two mRNA vaccines are based on the initial Wuhan-1 virus sequence of the spike protein. Both BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna have publicly stated in media [77,78] that, if necessary, it will be possible to update their vaccines with a new variant. BioNTech indicated it could do this within six weeks. However, this does not take into account production time, which would probably need to be added to this timeline. Manufacturing capacity is currently already being increased in the EU due to the urgent need for further doses both within the EU and elsewhere. EMA is currently exploring options for the timely approval of a vaccine strain update, should this be warranted.
(My bold. Source.)
In re the A-Z comment about small trials, note that in the EU there is already an existing procedure for deferring time consuming studies in a (flu) pandemic:
4.3.1.2. Requirements for applications to change vaccine composition (pandemic
strain change) during a pandemic situationWhere a pandemic situation is duly recognised by the WHO or the [European] Union, a variation application [in effect, a drug licence application specific to the pandemic strain] may be accepted to include the declared pandemic strain [attenuated virus] in the pandemic vaccine (‘pandemic strain update’), if appropriate.
As per Article 21 of Regulation (EC) No 1234/2008, it may be exceptionally and temporarily acceptable that certain non-clinical or clinical data on the declared pandemic strain are missing. In the latter, the MAH [Marketing Authorisation Holder] will have to submit the missing non-clinical and clinical data within the time limit set in the marketing authorisation.
The guideline is specific to flu, so talks in terms of attenuated viruses (which is what you get in flu vaccines) but I assume the same principles would be applied to this generation of vaccines.
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