Coronavirus vaccine may not provide long-term immunity, according to White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci. He expressed his worry about the vaccine’s “durability.”
He said that if Covid-19 persists like other coronaviruses, “it likely isn’t going to be a long duration of immunity.”
“When you look at the history of coronaviruses, the common coronaviruses that cause the common cold, the reports in the literature are that the durability of immunity that’s protective ranges from three to six months to almost always less than a year,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during an interview with JAMA Editor Howard Bauchner.
“That’s not a lot of durability and protection.”
Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health has been accelerating work with biotech firm Moderna on a potential Covid-19 vaccine.
Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University showed that the coronavirus already infected more than 6.28 million people around the world and killed at least 375,987.
On Tuesday, Dr. Fauci said that Moderna aims to register about 30,000 individuals when it starts a phase 3 trial in July. He mentioned that there are four trials for potential vaccines that he is either directly or indirectly involved in.
2021
The infectious diseases expert said that by the start of 2021 “we hope to have” hundreds of millions of doses.
Dr. Fauci said he is “cautiously optimistic” when it comes to finding a coronavirus vaccine that can prove immunity. He said that “there’s never a guarantee.” He is worried “it could take months and months and months to get an answer” before scientists determine whether the vaccine works.
US officials and scientists hope that a coronavirus vaccine can be used in the first half of 2021, which is 12 to 18 months since Chinese scientists first found out about the coronavirus and traced its genetic sequence.
It is record-breaking pace for a process that typically takes about a decade for a safe, effective vaccine.
However, scientists are still studying important areas of the virus. These include the response of the immune systems to a person who has been exposed. They say the answers could affect vaccine development, especially how fast it can be distributed to the public.
Dr. Fauci said during a congressional testimony last May that he remains optimistic about finding a workable candidate. However, he warned of potential setbacks in developing any vaccine.
“You can have everything you think that’s in place and you don’t induce the kind of immune response that turns out to be protective and durably protective,” Dr. Fauci said of a vaccine. “So one of the big unknowns is, will it be effective? Given the way the body responds to viruses of this type, I’m cautiously optimistic that we will with one of the candidates get an efficacy signal.”
No guarantee
Dr. Fauci previously said that there is no guarantee that the coronavirus vaccine is actually going to be effective.
“You can have everything you think that’s in place and you don’t induce the kind of immune response that turns out to be protective and durably protective,” Fauci said of a vaccine.
“So one of the big unknowns is, will it be effective? Given the way the body responds to viruses of this type, I’m cautiously optimistic that we will with one of the candidates get an efficacy signal.”
