Could there be one COVID-19 vaccine to rule them all? A number of researchers are trying to discover a COVID-19 vaccine that will stop any and all coronavirus variants that pop up in the future.
Will there be one COVID-19 vaccine to stop variants?
Per Reuters, there are two separate research teams that are conducting tests to create a new vaccine that could stop variants.
One study from the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that there were “high-level, broad-spectrum” antibodies in blood samples from those who survived the SARS outbreak in 2003.
- These antibodies could allegedly stop COVID-19 and “also five viruses that have been identified in bats and pangolins and that have the potential to cause human infection,” according to Reuters.
A second study, which was published in the medical journal Immunity, found an antibody that could protect against a number of COVID-19 variants in mice.
- “The antibody attaches to a part of the virus that differs little across the variants, meaning that it is unlikely for resistance to arise at this spot,” the authors said, according to Reuters.
Will there be an ideal COVID-19 vaccine?
Back in April, scientists told NPR they’re interested in creating an ideal COVID-19 vaccine that would be given out in a single shot and wouldn’t cause too many problems.
- The ideal COVID-19 vaccine would be “administered in a single shot, be room temperature stable, work in all demographics and, even pushed beyond that, ideally be self-administered,” Deborah Fuller, a vaccine researcher at the University of Washington, told NPR.
Some researchers have started to develop such a vaccine and test it out on volunteer groups. There’s even a case to develop a vaccine without needles, too.
- “We wanted to develop a platform technology where we could easily give a vaccine, and obviously the easiest format to give would be a tablet,” Sean Tucker, chief scientific officer at Vaxart, told NPR.