The COVID shots that are available at this point, developed in record time by several commercial drug companies under the direction of President Donald Trump, have been shown to reduce infection rates. But they also have come with side effects and complications that have spooked many Americans. And consumers have been told over and over to get booster shots, or updates.
Now there may be coming a solution, or at least part of a solution.
Defense One is reporting the U.S. Army has created a single shot that fights all COVID and SARS variants, including the latest, called Omicron.
The report explained scientists from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research plan to announce within a few weeks their vaccine “that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide. ”
It’s the result of almost two years of work after the Army lab got its first DNA sequencing of the COVID-19 virus early last year. The scientists immediately focused on a shot that would work against not only the existing strain but potential variants, the report said.
“Walter Reed’s Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, completed animal trials earlier this year with positive results. Phase 1 of human trials, which tested the vaccine against Omicron and the other variants, wrapped up this month, again with positive results that are undergoing final review, Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch, said in an exclusive interview with Defense One,” the report said.
The report said it is different from existing shots because it uses a soccer ball-shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein.
Modiarrad said the news was “exciting” especially because the lengthy time period involved in the work.
The report said the next step is to determine how the new result interacts with those who either were vaccinated previously, or were sick.
“We need to evaluate it in the real-world setting and try to understand how does the vaccine perform in much larger numbers of individuals who have already been vaccinated with something else initially…or already been sick,” Modjarrad said.
A report at the Daily Wire reported the U.K. Health Security Agency, which operates much like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, determined those with Omicron are less likely to become severely ill compared to people who get the Delta variant.
“More people are likely to have a mild illness with less serious symptoms — probably in part due to Britain’s large number of vaccinated and previously infected people, and possibly because Omicron may be intrinsically milder,” Politico had reported. “Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has previously cautioned against too much optimism based on the initial optimistic signs from South Africa in the past few weeks. However, the UKHSA’s view after studying cases in Britain is that Omicron is indeed usually less severe than Delta.”
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