The now famous American immunologist Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Infectious Diseases (Niaid), returned to talk about anti-Covid vaccines, declaring that an important program for the development of a universal vaccine which can be useful in the fight against all variants.
Focusing on vaccines that from time to time counter the single variant can only be a temporary strategy, but we must aim for a longer lasting solution that allows us to carry out an annual recall, for example, to protect ourselves against all Coronavirus mutations.
This will be achieved with a route in stages which has already begun and which will lead us to have the much desired universal vaccine. The immunologist Fauci talked about it in a video sent to the "Highlights in Immunology" meeting, promoted by the National Academy of Lincei and the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital.
The first step, a universal vaccine for current variants
During his speech, Fauci reiterated theimportance of current vaccines in the fight against Covid because they represent the "triumph of science and immunology" against this terrible pandemic and we can ascertain this from the data. Since we got vaccinated, the number of deaths and hospitalizations has dropped significantly, and with the third booster dose, the number of deaths and hospitalizations has also increased significantly. neutralization of different variants, including Omicron which is prevalent in our country.
The different vaccine studies Modern e Pfizer they agree that they have been instrumental in preventing severe symptoms of the disease and reducing the risk of death.
Yet, despite these great achievements, the universal vaccine is needed in order not to continually run after new variants. We will get there gradually because, as Anthny Fauci said, getting there at the first shot is too ambitious, but you can start with a pan-SarsCoV2 vaccine that protects against all Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Omicron variants.
The second step, the universal vaccine
Next, we can come up with a vaccine called pan-Sarbecovirus, which will protect both from SarsCov2, but also from SarsCoV1 and other viruses that can evolve into human infections.
The two vaccines that are being worked on
Anthony Fauci gave two examples of two vaccines he is working on himself:
- the first is based on nanoparticles that have fragments of Spike proteins from different viruses;
- the second administers SarsCoV2 and other inactivated coronaviruses via one nasal spray in order to confer broad protection against human and animal beta-coronaviruses.
