RE: NobbyGnome Post Information 'Uncut'10 Jan 2021 12:46
From professor horby today. Hence why therapeutics and testing will always be needed. Simples.
He says every virus mutates to create different strains but vaccines are updated to keep up with them.
"When there's a lot of immunity in the population, whether that's a vaccine or natural, we will see viruses emerge that escape that immunity.
"In the longer term, that will happen and we we will have to update that vaccine.
"But we do that every year with influenza so I don't think that's going to be a problem in the short term."
He says scientists do not yet know how long immunity lasts and therefore how often the population will need to be re-vaccinated.
He says: "The one virus we've managed to get rid of, smallpox, had very different characteristics to this virus... this one will not go away.
"I think we are going to have to live with it... it may well become more of an endemic.