Current vaccines may not be enough to cause the end of COVID-19. In fact, the virus can stay with us for many years.
Increasingly, public health officials and pharmaceutical companies are indicating that mutant strains and weakened vaccine efficiency could mean perpetual campaigns to keep the population immune, including the need to organize regular booster doses.
The virus would go from an acute, although prolonged, crisis to a fact of life.
This does not mean that we would have to live with the periodic blockages or public health measures on a national scale that we have seen. But that would mean an ongoing effort to tackle COVID-19. Governments would face the prospect of developing long-term vaccines and PPE-making capabilities and organizing regular vaccination campaigns that could make the annual flu season seem insignificant in comparison.
This fear has been exacerbated by new strains of the virus emerging worldwide. Some of the vaccines currently in mass production have been shown to be less effective against the South African variant, for example, while another mutation of the deadly virus appears to directly affect the responsiveness of vaccines and antibodies.
Pfizer announced on Tuesday that it was preparing for a “potentially durable and long-lasting need for COVID-19 vaccines”, telling investors that there would likely be a “need to regularly boost” to maintain the immune response of its mRNA vaccine .
And the CEO of Moderna, the other mRNA vaccine maker COVID-19, said last month that the world will have to live with COVID-19 “forever”. Both companies, of course, can reap financial rewards from the eternal demand for COVID-19 vaccines.
The Biden administration, for its part, has suggested that part of its efforts to build a deeper public health infrastructure will be directed at the prospect of viral mutations transforming COVID-19 into a much more lasting crisis.
Four to five years?
President Biden’s American rescue plan includes two clauses that directly address the potential for new variants that could destroy or decrease the effectiveness of the shots currently in production.
A proposal would send $ 30 billion to replenish the Disaster Relief Fund, a FEMA program to reimburse state governments for their response to COVID-19 and to buy supplies like PPE.
Biden’s plan also provides for $ 10 billion for the provision of Title III of the Defense Production Act to “expand domestic manufacturing for pandemic supplies”.
The law allows the government to inject money in the form of loans in strategic industries “to help expand domestic production capacity for essential commodities,” said Dave Kaufman, a former FEMA employee who worked on DPA issues and is now on think CNAS tank. PMS last week.
The policies reflect a growing fear that the COVID-19 crisis is not an acute emergency washed away by a massive wave of vaccinations, but could be an evolving long-term threat.
“Many people, including me, thought last year that if we had an effective vaccine, it would take six months and we would be outgrown,” Craig Fugate, a former FEMA administrator under President Obama who served in a Biden transition team review, he told the TPM. “I am increasingly thinking that it can take four to five years to keep it under control, new outbreaks, new variations and having to keep people vaccinated.”
One possible scenario is that mass vaccination will bring the current phase of the pandemic under control before mutations in the virus allow it to spread, despite the immunity created by the current round of vaccines. Another possibility is that the immunity conferred by the vaccines in production will erode sufficiently over time for the virus to continue to spread.
Any of the possibilities would require huge investments in vaccine manufacturing capabilities, which are already partially affected by the delicacy of the production process. DPA can be useful to meet this demand.
The prospect of vaccines being needed in an ultra-long-term period raises different questions about cost; the government is buying COVID-19 vaccines directly at the moment. But the flu vaccine only became free for many after the Affordable Care Act ordered insurers to cover the vaccine.
Going viral
All of this does not mean that the virus will forever be a deadly threat. One study found that it can turn into a disease with the severity of a common cold, although it still circulates in the human population.
Paul Offit, a vaccine developer and professor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who serves on an FDA vaccine advisory committee, told TPM that perpetual vaccinations would be needed in two cases: one in which “the virus mutates for as long as one year to the other that immunization does not protect you. “
Offit noted that this is a separate issue from what Pfizer raised, which is whether the two initial shots are sufficient to maintain immunity for a longer period of time.
“This is where you have weak immunity,” he said.
In any case, this would mean that the COVID-19 problem could not have a definite end.
“In most pandemics, there is really no clear line that you can cross and end,” said Fugate.
Offit said the coronavirus is relatively young in terms of existence in the human population. It spread around the world after leaving Wuhan, he said, in the form of a new variant.
“You should start worrying when you see people who have been fully vaccinated with the mRNA units who are still being hospitalized with the variant strain,” said Offit. “That’s when you know your vaccine has failed.”