UK Health Chief Has High Hopes for the Next 300 COVID Vaccines in Development

Some of the the 300 next generation Covid vaccines could finally achieve the aim of stopping people from spreading Covid, according to a UK Government virologist.

Professor Maria Zambon, influenza and respiratory virology head of the new UK Health Security Agency, said the current crop of Covid vaccines should be considered the ‘first generation’.

It was previously hoped that the current generation of Covid vaccines, initial studies of which showed huge efficacy in preventing infections that herd immunity in the population could be possible with high vaccination rates.

Herd immunity refers to having enough people in a population are effectively immune to a pathogen — meaning they are unable to catch and pass it on.

But the rise of the super-virulent Delta variant of Covid led scientists to believe the herd immunity is currently unachievable, because it makes vaccines weaker at stopping infection.

But Professor Zambon said that this might change in the years to come.

‘We have well over 300 vaccines in development worldwide, the vaccines that we see in here are very much first generation vaccines,’ she said.

‘It will be interesting to see in the coming years how next generation vaccines, or improved vaccines, can actually help on this question of prevention of infection, not just prevention of severe disease.’

Professor Zambon was speaking following the publication of a new study she contributed to showing that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people have the same potential to infect people if they catch Covid.

The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, found that regardless of vaccination status people who caught Covid had the same viral load until it peaked at three to four days after infection.

Viral load references how much virus is in a substance, in the case of Covid this means how much is present in the upper respiratory tract, the mouth, nose and throat.

But vaccinated people did have an easier time after the viral peak, with their bodies better able to fight off the virus.

But the discovery suggests that the vaccinated can spread the disease just as easily as the unvaccinated, though they are less likely to catch the virus in the first place.

The UK has ordered more than 400million doses of eight difference vaccines, but only four have been approved by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency: AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen.

Another key finding of the most recent study was that double-jabbed people still have a one in four chance of catching Covid from an infected household member, according to a study by ‘Professor Lockdown‘ Neil Fergusson.

This is even the case if the person infected was fully jabbed themselves, in what is known as a vaccine breakthrough case, said Imperial College London researchers.

But the risk to unvaccinated household members was even greater, with a 38 per cent chance of catching the virus from infected household members.

The scientists were ‘surprised’ to discover that the protection offered by the Covid vaccines began to significantly wane just three months after the second dose.

They say the findings make it more crucial than ever for people to come forward for their booster jab.

Source: The Daily Mail