Crossposting from the breaking news thread - a couple of posts detailing plans to tweak existing vaccines in order to protect against emerging new variants:
BMJ article: Covid-19: Moderna plans booster doses to counter variants
In the first approach Moderna said that it would see whether a third “booster dose” of the current mRNA-1273 vaccine added to the approved two dose regimen would further increase neutralising titres against the emerging variants.
In a second approach the company said that it had developed a booster vaccine candidate called mRNA-1273.351 against the emerging South African variant. It said that it was beginning phase I studi…
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…
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