The clean exit from the coronavirus pandemic promised by Covid-19 vaccines has been sullied by the arrival of new variants. Some of these viral newcomers appear to be putting up a fight against the current crop of jabs.
The scramble to update vaccines that have barely been rolled out is now pushing some towards a more ambitious goal: universal “variant-proof” vaccines, able to fend off different varieties of the same virus family.
“Such pan-virus vaccines could be made in advance and deployed before the next emerging infection becomes a pandemic,” wrote Dennis Burton and Eric Topol from the Scripps Research institute in a Nature commentary last week. “We call for an investment now in basic research leading to the stockpiling of broadly effective vaccines . . . Surely, global governments that together spend $2tn a year on defence can find a few hundred million dollars to stop the next pandemic?”