Why don’t currently developed Covid vaccines cover all the variants? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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 Today’s Covid vaccines are based on eliciting antibodies, proteins that circulate in the blood and bind to the virus. Johns Hopkins infectious disease expert Anna Durbin says trying to find the right antibody to cover all of the Covid variants is a big challenge.

Durbin: Trying to find an antibody target that works against all of the different viruses is much more difficult. Something that people are looking at that I think may be very beneficial are intranasal vaccines that really stimulate the immune response in the nose. Now that we have that basic immunity from vaccinations in the arm or from a natural infection, that intranasal vaccine will be a much better inducer of immunity at that local site.   :29

Intranasal vaccines would produce antibody right at the site where the virus first enters the body and would be less objectionable for some, Durbin says, and while results with them have been disappointing so far, that is likely to change going forward. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.