Covid Variants, Vaccine Supply Pose Challenges: Dr. Stephanie Silvera Weighs In
Posted in: College News and Events
A variant of the coronavirus that has been seen in other countries and states is now popping up more often in California.
Experts say they don’t know if it is more contagious, but there is some concern that vaccines may not work as well against it.
Dr. Stephanie Silvera, Professor in the Public Health Department, said that may prove not to be a serious problem because of the technology used in these vaccines. “They’re more plug and play than our older more traditional vaccines,” she said, “so in theory you could make new vaccines for new strains fairly quickly, however, they would still have to go through that safety approval from regulators and that would be sort of where the bottleneck would be most likely to occur.”
She also points out that the Covid vaccines have an unusually high effectiveness rate of about 95%, so even if a variant puts a dent in that, the vaccines would still be very effective.
Additionally, “The one glimmer of hope that may be still out there is that it looks like the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is likely to be moving forward with their attempts to get their emergency use authorization and that’s a one-dose vaccine,” she pointed out, which would obviously speed up the process of achieving immunity.