“And then the question is always, ‘is there another variant that’s coming up?”’ Story continues below advertisement The solution, she said, likely lies with vaccines that can target more than one variant at a time.The COVID-19 vaccine technical committee of the World Health Organization said the same thing on Jan.
20 should assume Omicron infection, Tam says Omicron doesn’t evade the existing vaccines entirely but a future variant could, he said.
Story continues below advertisement Think of the mutated spike protein as a bit of a disguise that makes it harder for the immune system to recognize the virus and mount a defence to kill it off.Omicron has more than 50 mutations, and at least 36 are on the spike protein.Multivalent vaccines that use the spike protein from more than one variant, or that target the genetic components of a virus rather than the spike protein, are possibly the ones that could offer protection for both this pandemic and the next novel coronavirus that emerges.“It’s pan-coronavirus, where it’s looking at big broad neutralizing responses and you don’t have to update it every season and so on,” said Murthy.