• Question: Will covid vaccines become a regular thing? (For example every year)

    Asked by hang449hug on 17 Jan 2022.
    • Photo: Samuel Ellis

      Samuel Ellis answered on 17 Jan 2022:

      Quite possibly, it depends on the outcomes of lots of research monitoring the current vaccines, as well as how future variants develop etc. A similar system already exists for influenza (the flu jab), where a new vaccine is prepared each year based on the variant with most risk and then offered to people who are most vulnerable.

    • Photo: Amy Mason

      Amy Mason answered on 17 Jan 2022:

      It’s hard to predict anything about Covid-19 because there are lots of new medicines and vaccines coming out that could change how we manage it.
      I think it is likely we might need regular booster jabs, like for flu, for the next few years to help us keep our immunity to it strong. After that, we might find other ways to manage.

    • Photo: Jonny Coates

      Jonny Coates answered on 17 Jan 2022:

      It is likely that we will have boosters (as we do with Flu) every year. In fact the two might even be combined into one injection to make things easier!

      But until we vaccinate the whole world we are going to continue having issues. We also need to do much more to combat vaccine hesitancy and misinformation

    • Photo: Valerie Vancollie

      Valerie Vancollie answered on 17 Jan 2022:

      As Amy said, it’s very hard to predict anything with Covid, but this is a possibility.

      However, it is also possible that we will be able to create a single coronavirus vaccine. This is currently being looked into, much as they are looking to see if we can create a universal flu vaccine. With Covid, they are starting by looking at people like doctors and nurses who were heavily exposed to the virus, but never actually caught it. It’s possible they already had immunity based on exposure to another coronavirus.

      While we currently hear a lot about SARS-CoV-2 which causes Covid-19, there has previously been SARS-CoV-1 which caused the SARS outbreak. But there are also coronaviruses that are already endemic. Several of them can cause what we call the common cold.

      So this is a possibility, even if it would take a lot of hard work and effort to get there.

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