Health officials are racing to vaccinate people as quickly as possible.
Doctors say current vaccines do protect against the original strain of COVID and a variant from the UK. However, trials for up-and-coming vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, Novavax and AstraZeneca are showing the shots are much less effective against the South African variant.
Pfizer and Moderna ran clinical trials before the variant from South Africa were around.
“The problem is people aren’t taking the vaccine. The virus is more transmissible, so they’ll be more cases, so we can expect another blip. The bigger problem is the South Africa variant where one in three people immunized will still probably get an infection,” said Dr. Alan Barrett, the director of the Sealy Institute for Vaccine Sciences at UTMB.
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Dr. Alan Barrett says all the vaccine companies are now tailoring new shots to the new variants. The goal is to complete new, smaller scale trials in order to push out booster shots as soon as this fall.
“We’re heading towards the scenario where when you get your flu booster every year, you’re going to get your COVID booster as well. I think that’s probably for the foreseeable future unfortunately,” he explained.
In the meantime, Dr. Barrett urges people to get the current vaccines when they are available, because they offer strong protection against the virus you’re most likely to get right now.