Il vaccino è ancora protettivo??

L'emergere di “infezioni secondarie” solleva anche un'altra preoccupazione: Il vaccino in fase di sviluppo perderà il suo effetto protettivo?

Riguardo a questo problema, gli esperti ritengono che non sia necessario farsi prendere dal panico troppo, anche se il vaccino deve essere aggiornato, tecnicamente non è difficile da realizzare.

Li Bin analyzed that there are at least five different strategies for vaccine development. Each strategy, even for some subunit protein vaccines, uses sequences of conserved regions of the virus, especially for the S protein bound to the ACE2 receptor on the host cell surface.

“No matter how the virus mutates, it always has to enter the cell to infect. To infect the cell, it must bind to the ACE2 receptor. Most vaccine development strategies are designed to prevent this combination.”

Li Bin believes that the current vaccine will still be useful, but it may not be useful for new mutant strains. If there are so many mutations in the virus that make existing vaccines unusable, new epidemic strains may be selected next year.

In the opinion of experts, the possibility of updating vaccines should be considered, but this is not a big problem. It just takes time to select new epidemic strains. It is not difficult to achieve technically at present. Inoltre, based on the current understanding, the mutation of the new coronavirus is not as fast as the influenza virus.

“Whether the new vaccine needs to undergo phase III clinical trials again depends on the mutation of the virus. It does not necessarily need to be done. Per esempio, the current influenza virus vaccine does not need to undergo phase III clinical trials every phase.”