News02/12/2021

Booster shots, second-generation vaccines: COVID-19 vaccine makers rush to adapt to coronavirus variants

CIR Principal Investigator Dr. Durbin discusses plans for COVID-19 vaccine makers to combat new virus strains while continuing the roll out of currently licensed vaccines.  She says, “One thing I do want to stress is though that those (vaccines) that have been tested are highly effective in the prevention of hospitalization and severe COVID, which is good news,” Durbin continued. “Meaning that we can prevent hospitalizations, we can prevent death and severe COVID. But we recognize that the virus has changed over time and so we have these variants and what the companies are doing is they’re looking at those and saying, ‘Can we modify our current vaccines so that they will induce better protection and hopefully prevent even mild and moderate COVID caused by some of the variant strains?’”

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