Scientists should focus on protecting people against both current and future coronavirus variants when developing the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines, according to two infectious disease experts at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital.
Michael Callahan, MD, and Mark Poznansky, MD, PhD, wrote a guest essay published June 10 in The New York Times, in which they warned that evolving coronavirus variants could overcome the immunity provided by existing vaccines and prior infections.
The first generation of COVID-19 vaccine development focused on getting safe and effective shots into arms as quickly as possible to mitigate the devastating public health, economic and social effects of the pandemic. However, the first generation did not address how to prevent infections from variants or future waves, according to Drs. Callahan and Poznansky.
"The second generation of Covid-19 vaccines, which are now in development as booster shots, is aimed at known variants, but they are not designed with future variants in mind," the physicians wrote. "This is 'whack-a-mole' vaccine development, an inefficient and costly approach that chases yesterday’s virus."
The physicians advocated for a vaccine development strategy that predicts which variants are most likely to occur and designs vaccines to target them in advance.
Read more about their strategy here.