UTMB researchers say COVID shots might become annual
GALVESTON — Even after much of the general population gets COVID-19 vaccines, they will likely need to get annual doses to protect against future mutations of the virus, according to researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Scott Weaver, director of the medical branch’s infectious disease research programs, said viruses like COVID-19 will eventually find ways to mutate in order to continue to infect people, even those who have antibodies from vaccines or previous infections.
“We may very well need to do the same thing for influenza vaccines — produce a new one every year or two based on the updated sequences of the rapidly circulating coronavirus strains,” Weaver said during a COVID-19 forum hosted by UTMB Tuesday.
Fortunately, Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines, currently authorized for emergency use in the United States, are designed to be adaptable. Weaver said the genetic sequencing of those viruses can “very easily” be swapped with whichever new COVID-19 strain is circulating in a given year.
“In a matter of a couple of months we could generate a new vaccine that’s perfectly designed for the currently circulating strains,” he said.
The UTMB forum was held around the first anniversary of the first COVID-19 case on U.S. soil, in Washington state.
The medical branch hosted a forum last March, at the beginning of the global pandemic, when information on the virus was still being gathered and much less was known about its long- and short-term effects.
UTMB is one of the institutions on the front lines of COVID-19 research. At the outset of the viral outbreak, medical branch researchers developed a reverse genetic system to manipulate the virus genome. The Galveston National Laboratory at UTMB, a high-security biocontainment lab, was one of three labs in the country to get the coronavirus isolate in February after the Centers for Disease Control worked on the first virus sample in Washington state and cultured it in Atlanta.
That same reverse genetic system continues to yield
useful information about the virus. Earlier this month, a study conducted by medical branch researchers found that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is effective against the mutated strains of the virus known as the United Kingdom and South Africa variants.
The forum also gave UTMB’s experts a chance to answer basic questions about the vaccination process and possible side effects — and even attempt to
debunk theories about COVID-19’s origins.
Megan Berman, a professor of internal medicine with the Sealy Institue of Vaccine Sciences at UTMB, said that one of the main reasons young and healthy people should still get vaccinated is because of the uncertainty over whether authorized vaccines protect people against asymptomatic spread of infection.
“This is something that’s going to be researched, but
30 percent of cases are spread by people who do not know they have the infection, so one of the only ways we can stop this infection is by stopping people from getting the virus,” Berman said.
Richard Rupp, assistant director of the Sealy Center for Vaccine Development, said those who have been previously infected by COVID-19 and recovered should still get vaccinated. It is not yet known how long antibodies from the virus are effective against re-infection, he said, and a vaccine would boost the immune system.
Weaver is also optimistic that vaccines being developed by the medical branch might eventually offer stronger protection against infection than the currently authorized mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
UTMB researchers are currently working on live attenuated vaccines for COVID-19, which use a weakened form of the virus that causes infection to immunize people — similar to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines that children get.
“(Live attenuated vaccines) confer protection for decades, if not longer,” Weaver said. “But those are going to take much longer to develop because showing safety of a live, replicating virus is much tougher than showing that in a messenger RNA vaccine.”
He added that most people should be eligible to receive the vaccine “hopefully by April and May” if the supply of vaccines from the federal government improves.