Coronavirus: vaccine with ‘incomplete’ immunity could offer a solution to pandemic, experts say
- ‘There is evidence that immunity doesn’t necessarily have to be sterilising or even comprehensive’ in a Covid-19 treatment, one researcher says
- As the race for a vaccine accelerates, the National Institutes of Health has begun a first trial for one developed by Moderna to have phase one results in weeks
As the United States, far and away the global leader in coronavirus cases and deaths, seeks treatments to halt the pandemic and resume regular economic activities, medical experts say that a quicker solution may be vaccines that are less than total.
“There is evidence that immunity doesn’t necessarily have to be sterilising or even comprehensive,” said Dr Mark Denison, director of paediatric infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville, Tennessee.
Denison, who is working on antiviral treatments for Covid-19, said that “immunity that is incomplete … is likely to lead to infections that are milder, even if you can’t get absolute protection”.
“That’s a better primary goal that may be more achievable” in the current situation, Denison said during an online discussion about vaccines on Tuesday. The outbreak has so far infected more than 610,000 and claimed more than 27,000 lives in the US.
The discussion was sponsored by Moderna, an immunotherapy provider based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which developed a gene-based vaccine that was the first candidate sent to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for testing in early February.