'The Worst Version' of COVID Is Spreading. Can We Update Our Vaccines in Time

6/30/22, 11:43 PM 'The worst version' of COVID is spreading. Can we update our vaccines in time?
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'The worst version' of COVID is spreading.

Can we update our vaccines in time?
N. Korea suggests balloons flown from South
Andrew Romano · West Coast Correspondent brought COVID-19
Associated Press
Thu, June 30, 2022, 6:19 AM
For the last 18 months, the original COVID-19 vaccines — first as a two-dose series, then
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as boosters — have done an extraordinary job shielding us from illness, hospitalization
Covid vaccines are made with cells from
and death. Globally, they saved nearly 20 million lives in 2021 alone. Even today, 'aborted children'
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unvaccinated Americans are twice as likely as vaccinated Americans to test positive for
COVID — and six times as likely to die from the disease.
But viruses evolve, and vaccines should too.
That was the big-picture takeaway from a pivotal meeting this week of the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration’s expert advisory panel. The question before them was simple:
Ahead of an expected winter surge, should vaccine manufacturers tweak their
forthcoming booster shots to target Omicron — the ultra-infectious variant that has Omicron: Experts want more data to guide
US targeting of fall boosters
spent the last seven months surging throughout the world in one form or another — or Yahoo Finance
should they stick with the tried-and-true 2020 recipe?
The panel voted 19-2 on Tuesday in favor of Omicron boosters. The question now,
however, is which version of Omicron the next round of shots should target.
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A health worker administers a dose of a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in Norristown, Pa., in 2021. (Matt Rourke/AP)
For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, the Omicron strain that triggered last
winter’s massive COVID wave (BA.1) is now extinct. In March, it was supplanted by the Kentucky abortion law triggered by Supreme
Court decision blocked by judge
even more transmissible BA.2 … which was supplanted in May by the even more
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transmissible BA.2.12.1 … which is now being supplanted by the (you guessed it) even
more transmissible BA.4 and BA.5.
Experts say BA.5 is the one to worry about: “The worst version of the virus that we’ve
seen,” as Dr. Eric Topol, the founder of Scripps Research Translational Institute, recently
put it. Together, the closely related BA.4 and BA.5 now account for the majority of new
U.S. COVID cases, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention — but BA.5 (36.6%) is spreading a lot faster than BA.4 (15.7%). By early July,
it will be the dominant strain in the U.S.
That’s troublesome for several reasons. To our immune system, the distance from BA.1
to heavily mutated BA.4 and BA.5 is “far greater,” Topol writes, than the distance from
the original BA.1 virus to previous blockbuster variants such as Alpha and Delta — which
makes them harder to recognize and respond to. According to the latest research, that
could mean:
More breakthrough infections, especially among people who previously had BA.1.
Compared to BA.2, BA.2.12.1 is only modestly (1.8-fold) more resistant to antibodies
from vaccinated and boosted individuals. But BA.4 and BA.5 are substantially (4.2-
fold) more resistant.
More symptoms. BA.4 and BA.5 are also better at replicating in lung cells than BA.2
— a shift that could mean, according to one experimental model, that they’re more
“pathogenic” as well (i.e., more likely to make you sick).
More resistance to treatments. At the same time, BA.4 and BA.5 appear to be 20-
fold more resistant than BA.2 to Evusheld — an important monoclonal antibody
treatment that has been providing preemptive protection for immunocompromised
people.
None of this will set the U.S. back to square one. Despite elevated case levels, there are
now fewer U.S. COVID patients in intensive care units than there were during previous
phases of the pandemic, and the national death rate (about 300-400 per day) is near
the all-time low. Acquired immunity, multiple rounds of vaccination and improved
treatment options are helping — a lot.
But combined with waning vaccine protection and disappointing booster uptake among
the elderly, the virus’s accelerating evolution and aggressive new trajectory — toward
greater transmissibility, evasiveness and possibly pathogenicity — could cause
significant reinfections and disruptions if not addressed.
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A sign seen in March in New York City outlining the CDC’s guidelines to control the spread of COVID. (John Minchillo/AP)
In late April, BA.5 hit Portugal; by June, more Portuguese people were dying of COVID
each day than during the country’s winter Omicron peak. To be sure, Portugal has a
larger senior population (23%) than the U.S. (16%), but not by much. And the
vaccination rate there is 87%, compared to just 67% in America. Portugal’s booster rate,
meanwhile, is nearly twice as high as ours. Infection and hospitalization rates are now
rising across much of the rest of Europe as well.
At Tuesday’s FDA advisory meeting, Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presented a series of projections about how the virus
could affect the U.S. in the months ahead. The most optimistic scenario? About 95,000
new deaths between March 2022 and March 2023. The most pessimistic? More than
200,000.
So given that BA.5 — which, again, is outcompeting its cousin BA.4 — will soon be
everywhere, it seems logical that the next version of the vaccine should be tailored to
fight it.
Yet that hasn’t necessarily been the plan. Both Pfizer and Moderna have already
launched clinical trials for redesigned fall boosters … but those boosters are optimized
to counter the now-nonexistent BA.1 rather than the soon-to-be-dominant BA.5.
According to data presented Tuesday by Pfizer, their existing BA.1 booster generated a
significantly lower level of neutralizing antibodies against BA.4 and BA.5 than against
BA.1.
Vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are prepared for packaging in 2021. (Pfizer via AP)
Yet in mice, at least, a booster containing BA.4 and BA.5 produced a higher neutralizing
response to all Omicron variants (including BA.4 and BA.5) than the original vaccine.
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Despite concerns about “scant” data about whether bivalent boosters (equal parts
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original strain and Omicron) work better than monovalent boosters (100% Omicron),
and about whether it’s worth waiting for Novavax’s promising non-mRNA vaccine to hit
the market, the panel mostly agreed that BA.4/BA.5 boosters make sense. The FDA is
leaning that way as well. Pfizer said it was “prepared” to deliver the new boosters by the
first week of October; Moderna, by the last week of October or early November —
“assuming no clinical data requirements.”
That means no human trials — just animal trials and laboratory tests. That might sound
scary to some, but regulators already use the same accelerated process to update the
flu vaccine each year — and there is no mechanism by which minor mRNA tweaks will
make revised Pfizer and Moderna shots any less safe than the billions of doses
administered so far worldwide. Otherwise, the U.S. will miss its fall-winter deadline, and
the fast-evolving virus will continue to outrun the vaccines.
The FDA itself will decide “very rapidly” what to recommend; manufacturers will follow
their lead.
A syringe is prepared with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Chester, Pa., in 2021. (Matt Rourke/AP)
In the future, chasing variants may not prove to be the most effective or efficient
approach to COVID vaccination. As Topol put it, “by the time a BA.5 vaccine booster is
potentially available, who knows what … the predominant strain” will be? That’s why it
was welcome news Wednesday when Pfizer and BioNTech announced that they plan to
“start tests on humans of next-generation shots that protect against a wide variety of
coronaviruses in the second half of the year,” according to a Reuters report.
These include “T-cell-enhancing shots, designed to primarily protect against severe

disease if the virus becomes more dangerous,” and “pan-coronavirus shots that protect
against the broader family of viruses and its mutations.” Nasal vaccines meant to stop
infection before it starts are promising as well.
But those are all longer-term propositions. This year, at least, a BA.5 booster is probably
our best bet to minimize infection, illness and death during another likely winter surge.
“I fully expect further evolution to occur in the coming months, but that this evolution
will most likely be on top of BA.4/BA.5 — and so [it] shouldn’t dissuade vaccine
updates,” virologist Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in
Seattle wrote earlier this week. “I believe that the decision making process can be boiled
down to: of vaccine compositions that can be manufactured in time for fall distribution,
which do we expect to generate the highest [protection] against BA.4/BA.5?”
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John · 16 hours ago

How do they even know what variant is spreading. In all the testing I have had for Covid, it was NEVER
revealed which variant was there when I did test positive. Plus now, many people are just taking tests at home,
which don't even get reported, let alone tested to determine the variant.
Reply 573 81
Mike · 16 hours ago

They don't tell you what strain you have when you get your PCR results. They do however test say 100 tests to
determine what strain it is. The samples are picked randomly. They then find a percentage of each variant
within the samples. So if 33 out of 100 came up BA2.12.1 then 33% of virus spreadin...See more
Reply 261 35
14 replies
Gina D · 13 hours ago

My mother-in-law got sick, who is vaxxed. She was out to lunch with some lady friends and one of them was
coughing a lot. That lady friend ended up testing positive for Covid, My mother-in-law started getting a really
bad sore throat, so she decided to go to the doctor. The doctor didn't even t...See more
Reply 19
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6/30/22, 11:43 PM 'The worst version' of COVID is spreading. Can we update our vaccines in time?

Llama blood may protect against COVID and

'The worst version' of COVID is spreading.

But viruses evolve, and vaccines should too.

should they stick with the tried-and-true 2020 recipe?

McDonald's worker praised for kicking

And although tran

Lawyer goes viral for offering free legal help

At Tuesday’s FDA advisory meeting, Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of

These include “T-cell-enhancing shots, designed to primarily protect against severe

And although tran

"Yahoo Staff" or "Staff" label. See our community guidelines for more information.

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John · 16 hours ago

Mike · 16 hours ago

Gina D · 13 hours ago

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