Regular booster vaccines against the novel coronavirus will be needed because of mutations that make it more transmissible and better able to evade human immunity, the head of Britain’s effort to sequence the virus’s genomes told Reuters in an interview. “We have to appreciate that we were always going to have to have booster doses; immunity to coronavirus doesn’t last forever,” Sharon Peacock, who heads COVID-19 Genomics UK told Reuters. The novel coronavirus, which has killed 2.65 million people globally since it emerged in China in late 2019, mutates around once every two weeks, slower than influenza or HIV, but enough to require tweaks to vaccines.
Health
Reuters exclusively reports regular booster vaccines are the future in battle with COVID-19 virus
15 March 2021, 7:24 pm 1 minute
Article Tags
Topics of Interest: Health
Type: Reuters Best
Sectors: Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare
Regions: Global
Countries: England
Win Types: Exclusivity
Story Types: Exclusive / Scoop
Media Types: Text
Customer Impact: Significant National Story