Is Fauci’s prediction for an annual COVID vaccine an attempt to ‘slander’ people that it’s like the flu?
The annual COVID vaccine, like the annual flu vaccine, will likely to become a reality in the near futureWhite House officials announced this week – further cementing the case that the acute phase of the pandemic is, at least, over.
“In the absence of a significantly different variant, we may be on a path to a vaccination cycle similar to the annual flu vaccination rhythm,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the Institute Allergy and Infectious Diseases National and presidential physician, said at a press conference ahead of the approval and distribution of the new Omicron booster.
Ideally, updates to the COVID-19 shot would be made each year to match the strains of the virus circulating, as well as to the flu vaccine, he added.
But some experts disagree with Fauci’s prediction, warning that typical COVID vaccine immunity lasts only four to six months — and the virus is still evolving.
Dr Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said: “I don’t see any evidence that an annual COVID shot will bring any benefit. provide lasting protection… without the need for a better vaccine. tweet last week.
“Gives the wrong impression of year-round protection ([against] severe illness and death) with the data in hand is unacceptable,” he later added.
Dr. Lee Altenberg, a theoretical biologist and professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, has shown that even the flu vaccine does not provide year-long protection. Articles in 2019 are from Clinical infectious disease That said, the flu shot’s protection only lasts up to 90 to 160 days.
Such periods of protection can generally work for seasonal viruses such as influenza. But COVID is not seasonal, Altenberg and other experts say, with the increase mainly due to interesting new variations.
“This ‘annual COVID shot’ takes on more urgency — a casual denial of the reality of the pandemic — an attempt to pretend it’s like the flu — to shock people. [that] it’s the flu,” Altenberg tweeted.
The vaccine strategy should not be to “chase variants”, but rather to develop a broad-spectrum, robust vaccine that provides “strong immunity to as many variants as possible”, Dr. Andrew Pekosz, a virologist and professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said Thursday.
Case in point: The new COVID variants BA.4.6 and BA.2.75 may partially escape vaccine-induced immunity, although they “should be recognized by the new Omicron boosters,” he said. speak.
US ‘catches up with virus’, but lags behind other countries
According to Topol and other experts, a nasal vaccine, in addition to a vaccine that blocks all COVID variants or even all coronaviruses, is the way forward.
But so far there have been no products in the US — based on the White House COVID tsar Dr Ashish Jha’s claim that science has “catch up to the virus”.
Earlier this week, China approved CanSino Biologics’ inhaled COVID vaccine for use as a booster. Clinical trial data show it to be more effective, as an enhancer, in preventing infections from Omicron and other variants than the injectable vaccine produced by the Chinese company Sinovac.
Pierre Morgon, executive vice president at its maker, CanSino Biologics, said it was the first inhaled vaccine for any disease. told recently Luck. While the nasal spray vaccine, Flu Mist, exists for the flu, its component is absorbed through tissue inside a person’s nose and is not intended for inhalation.
And India this week approved First nasal spray vaccine, with maker Bharat Biotech, calling it a “global game changer”. (Russia and Iran also claim to have approved and widely distributed the nasal spray vaccine.)
There are “many ways” to a vaccine that offers truly year-long protection against COVID, “and the United States is not actively pursuing any of them,” Topol said. above Twitter this week.
“The push for our exit is inevitable.”
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