EditorAll viruses evolve, and Covid-19 is no exception: since its inception, thousands of mutations have occurred.
They become concerning when they enable the virus to spread more quickly, increase lethality or help it better evade recognition by the human immune system.
The Delta variant is one such case — more infectious than previous Covid strains, it currently represents over 90% of new cases in countries like the UK, US, Germany and India.
Just a few days ago, another variant, dubbed Mu, was put on WHO’s watchlist this week and could be more vaccine-resistant than previous strains.
With so many variants around, a pan-coronavirus vaccine is urgently needed.
The good news is that research now strongly suggests it is possible to develop an immunity against multiple COVID-19 variants.
A new study published on August 18, 2021, by researchers in Singapore notably found a broader immune response to multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants (including current Covid-19 variants) among those who received the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine and had also contracted SARS during the 2002-2003 outbreak.
This was compared to vaccinated people who had never contracted SARS.
The study was small in scale and only for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but it suggests that certain parts of the original SARS virus might be present in multiple coronaviruses.
Should that be case and scientists are able to pin-point that part, the route to a pan-coronavirus vaccine would be in sight. A ray of hope indeed.
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