The pace of coronavirus vaccinations will determine the need for new injections

• Scientists fear that vaccinations are not taking place quickly enough to prevent the emergence of new, perhaps more deadly, strains of coronavirus.
• New variants that can escape existing vaccines can create a cycle in which people need to continue receiving new coronavirus vaccines for years.
• UK officials said on Friday that the variant identified may have a higher death rate than the original, although the evidence is “uncertain”.
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

The global launch of the vaccine is running against the clock: new, more infectious variants of the coronavirus are spreading around the world, and it is unclear how the existing vaccines work against these strains.

For now, vaccines appear to be effective against the strain identified in December in the UK, called B117. But preliminary research suggests that vaccines may be less effective against B1351, the strain identified in South Africa.

“It’s all the more reason to vaccinate as many people as possible,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Thursday. “Viruses don’t mutate unless they replicate, and if you can suppress that through a very good vaccination campaign, then you can really avoid the harmful effect that you can get from mutations.”

But the process of obtaining gun shots is slow in many countries. The United States has administered more coronavirus vaccines than any other country, but has only distributed about 19 million doses as of Friday.

Scientists fear that the current rate of vaccination could allow the emergence of many new strains. This can lead to a scenario in which scientists must update vaccines regularly.

Michael Worobey, a viral evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, recently told the BBC that the emergence of new strains of coronavirus could be “a glimpse into the future in which we will be in an arms race with this virus, just as we have the flu.”

It is also possible for a more lethal strain to appear before most people are vaccinated. In this case, coronavirus vaccines may be routinely necessary for young people, similar to polio or measles vaccines.

Coronavirus may eventually resemble the common cold

Half point images / Getty images

The future of coronavirus depends a lot on our ability to control transmission quickly. The more people who develop immunity – whether through natural infection or vaccines – the faster the virus will reach an endemic state, meaning it will circulate perpetually, but will no longer reach pandemic levels.

In a recent study, researchers at Emory University and Pennsylvania State University suggested that the coronavirus could eventually resemble a common cold that infects people during childhood.

In the most likely scenario of this study, children would have their first COVID-19 infection, on average, between the ages of 3 and 5. Almost all children would be infected at age 15. As pediatric infections are generally mild, there would be no need to vaccinate children beforehand. Babies can also have a certain degree of immunity at birth.

“During the first six months of life or more, or maybe more if you are breastfeeding, children have maternal antibodies from their mothers, both from the umbilical cord and from breast milk, so there is a lot of time in the first year or more of life when children are not going to have a primary infection, “Jennie Lavine, lead author of the study, told Insider.

The researchers estimated that reinfections would be even milder – and may even increase immunity against related coronavirus strains.

If vaccination is rapid, the New York Times reported, the virus can reach this endemic state in less than six months to a year. Fauci recently estimated that life could return to normal in the fall if 70% to 85% of Americans were vaccinated by the end of the summer.

But based on the observed patterns of other human coronaviruses, the researchers’ model suggested that the new coronavirus would likely become endemic within five to 10 years. In other words, without rapid vaccinations, outbreaks can persist for some time.

Updating vaccines for new variants

Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune via AP

Vaccines trigger the production of antibodies specific to the virus, so that if people are exposed to the virus after being vaccinated, those same antibodies will recognize the virus and destroy it before it has a chance to replicate widely.

Ideally, coronavirus vaccines protect against all strains of the virus for several years.

But scientists fear that the new variants of the coronavirus may be different enough from the original to avoid antibodies developed in response to vaccines. If that happens, scientists may need to constantly adjust the vaccine’s genetic instructions to eliminate new strains. The process is not necessarily difficult, but it would mean that people would need follow-up injections.

“If we have to modify the vaccine, this is not very expensive,” said Fauci on Thursday. “We can do that, given the platforms we have.”

But a scenario in which new strains require people to be revaccinated regularly – as is already the case with flu vaccines – becomes increasingly likely the longer it takes to put current vaccines into arms.

It is also possible, however, that other layers of immunity may protect people from emerging strains. White blood cells known as T cells and B cells also remember foreign invaders, often for longer periods than antibodies. A recent study suggested that patients recovered from coronavirus had robust T and B cell immunity for at least eight months. A SARS study, which is caused by a genetically similar coronavirus, showed that recovered patients had T cell immunity 17 years after infection.

A more deadly strain could make coronavirus vaccines a routine

Kirsty O’Connor / POOL / AFP via Getty Images

By vaccinating people quickly, public health officials hope to avoid the worst case scenario: the emergence of a deadly coronavirus strain.

“The things we need to keep looking for to prevent this from becoming a very bland endemic thing that does not require vaccination would be if the virus somehow changes in a way that childhood infections become more serious,” Lavine said.

In that case, she added, all young people would need to be vaccinated before they get their first coronavirus infection.

There is already evidence that the UK coronavirus strain may be more deadly than the original. UK chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance said on Friday that the new variant could have a mortality rate of up to 30% higher among some age groups, although the evidence remains “uncertain”.

The good news, however, is that existing coronavirus vaccines appear to work against it.

“From what we’ve seen so far, the variants described do not alter the ability to neutralize antibodies produced by vaccination to neutralize the virus,” said Moderna Medical Director Tal Zaks at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference earlier this month.

But that makes the task of vaccinating people even more urgent.

“Everyone will probably be infected someday,” said Lavine. “We will make you an infection after vaccination, so that you don’t get really sick.”