Experts air vision for better vaccines as BA.5 expands dominance

At a White House COVID-19 vaccine summit, experts today discussed what better vaccines would look like, such as one that would block transmission, as the Omicron BA.5 subvariant gained an ever bigger foothold in the United States.Wanted: broader protection, blocked transmission and infectionToday's vaccine summit, held both in person and on Zoom, was designed to spur discussions on a more broadly protective vaccine and better ways to deliver and equitably distribute it.Tony Fauci, MD, chief White House medical advisor, said given the steady stream of variants of concern, countries need a broader, more durable vaccine to protect against future coronaviruses.

He added that the current focus is a pan–SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, but the next step would be a pan sarbecovirus vaccine, which would be useful for tackling new emergences from bats.

Sarbecoviruses are the viral subgenus containing the SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-Cov-2.Fauci and other scientists at today's summit highlighted the advantages of a mucosal vaccine approach, which can more quickly prompt immunity and block infection and transmission.

Another benefit is needle-free administration. However, he noted that mucosal immunity is hard to assess.Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, an immunobiologist with the Yale University School of Medicine, said transmission-blocking vaccines are really the only way to stop long COVID and blunt the emergence of variants.Officials also discussed ways to speed research and better navigate regulatory hurdles.When asked about the benefits of next-generation vaccines for the world, Paul Burton, MD, PhD, Moderna's chief medical officer, said they raise confidence, provide a way to exit the pandemic, and are better tools for tamping down future pandemics.At today's