How quickly can we modify COVID-19 vaccines to tackle any new variants that arise? Jennifer Pancorbo has some answers.

The ongoing battles with COVID variants Delta and Omicron highlight just how quickly viruses can mutate, and what that can mean for public health.

Pancorbo is a vaccine manufacturing expert and director of industry programs and research at North Carolina State University’s Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center.

Here, she explains modifying the COVID-19 vaccine and clarifies why it’s becoming so difficult for people to obtain rapid test kits for detecting COVID-19:

I know you have a lot of familiarity with influenza vaccine manufacturing, and the fact that each year the flu vaccine is modified to account for whichever flu strains experts think will be prevalent in the coming year. However, I also know that the COVID-19 vaccines are mRNA vaccines and adenovirus vaccines, but the flu vaccines are not. How difficult would it be for COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to modify their vaccines to account for new strains of SARS-CoV-2, such as the Omicron variant?

The difference in vaccine platform technology should not impair the ability of manufacturers to respond to new strains of the virus. If anything, the mRNA technology provides a platform for faster response. Unfortunately, responding to yearly changes in the dominant virus strain faces other challenges, in addition to manufacturing capacity.

Can you explain what those other challenges are?

For one there is a very well established worldwide network for influenza virus surveillance. There is no equivalent for COVID-19. For influenza, there are centers around the world that collect data on strain circulation; experts then use that data to make an educated guess as to which strains will be most likely to present major health threats to the public; and those strains are incorporated into the seasonal vaccine formulation.

In the case of COVID-19, we do not have that rigorous surveillance in place yet. Therefore anticipating a formulation becomes a challenge.

In addition, there is an intricate supply chain network in place for influenza vaccine manufacturing components that gears up months before manufacturing even begins and uses forecasting from previous years to guess demand. Without those systems in place, responding quickly to a new coronavirus strain seems unlikely.

And then there is the risk. The decision about which formulation to manufacture for influenza each year is a calculated risk, based on many years of experience. Without the backup of experience, companies may be less willing to accept the risk for manufacturing a new COVID-19 vaccine that targets a particular strain.

Read the full article about COVID-19 vaccines responding to variants by Matt Shipman at Futurity.