Covid Bivalent Vaccines: An Update
As I suggested in my blog released in February , a new upgraded vaccine has emerged in the form of a bivalent Covid19 product developed by Moderna. This has just been approved by MHRA for use in the UK. This is something of a milestone in vaccine development, since it is the first approval anywhere in the world of a vaccine designed specifically to mimic the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants (in this case BA.1). This is not before time – all the current approved vaccines are based on the spike protein of the original Wuhan variant, which was identified and sequenced by the Chinese way back in early 2020. Many changes have occurred in the structure of the S-Protein since then, making the Omicron variants 'look' quite different to our immune systems, and this has resulted in a considerable reduction in the effectiveness of our vaccines against the virus (although mercifully not so far in their effectiveness against its most serious manifestations). T...