Vaccines can be tweaked to offer protection against newer variants: AIIMS chief

Dr Guleria's remark comes at a time when experts have expressed that the mutations on Omicron have rendered most vaccines useless

All India Institute of Medical Sciences director Randeep Guleria believes that existing Covid-19 vaccines can be tweaked to offer protection against newer variants of the SARS-CoV2 virus.

The production of new influenza vaccines every year shows that Covid-19 vaccines, too, can be tweaked to fight all kinds of mutations, Dr Guleria was quoted as having said during an event in New Delhi by The Times of India.

Dr Guleria's remark comes at a time when a number of immunologists and other experts have expressed that the mutations on Omicron have rendered most vaccines useless.

Also Read | Most vaccines unlikely to protect against Omicron infections, according to initial studies

The Pfizer and Moderna shots use the new mRNA technology, which has consistently offered the best protection against infection from all variants so far. All of the other vaccines are based on older methods of triggering an immune response.

Antibodies are the first line of defence induced by vaccines. But the shots also stimulate the growth of T cells, and preliminary studies suggest that these T cells still recognise the Omicron variant, which is important in preventing severe disease.

But this protection will not be enough to prevent Omicron from causing global disruption, said J Stephen Morrison, Director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for International and Strategic Studies.

“The sheer scale of infection will overwhelm health systems, simply because the denominator will be potentially so big,” he said. “If you have a burst of infection worldwide, a shock, what does the world look like on other side of it? Is it, ‘The war is over,’ or, ‘The war has just entered another phase’? We haven’t begun thinking about any of that.”

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