Variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 are emerging and becoming dominant around the world. So some vaccines are being updated to allow our immune system to learn how to deal with them.
But this process of identifying and characterising variants that can escape our immune system, then tweaking a vaccine to deal with them, can take time.
So researchers are designing a universal coronavirus vaccine. This could mean one vaccine to protect against different variants of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Alternatively, a universal vaccine would target many different coronaviruses, perhaps one waiting in the wings to cause the next pandemic.
Good things can often come out of bad. Its been a dreadful year and before the pandemic the British Government had already cut back money set aside for research. When Covid 19 erupted their short-sightedness showed up so no option but to plough more and more money into finding vaccines. Fortunately, the researchers are taking full advantage of the funding and new vaccines fit for purpose are being designed. This is yet another example of their wonderful. work.
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