Because the COVID-19 virus continues to mutate and infect people across the globe, health experts identified why the vaccine for the brand new variant is taking so long to reach.

Two years into the pandemic, it’s change into clear that one in every of its biggest challenges is the constant virus mutation that forces vaccine manufacturers to return up and release latest boosters.

The difficulty is, while greater than 75% of recent U.S. cases have been linked to the present BA.5 omicron variant, the COVID-19 booster shots that can goal that and the BA.4 variant won’t be ready until fall. By then, a completely latest coronavirus strain might already be wreaking havoc, in response to experts.

This already happened with the booster for the unique BA.1 omicron variant that took some time before reaching vaccine trials, despite the actual variant largely vanishing from the actual population. To that end, health experts are warning that this approach is unsustainable and a stark contrast to how briskly the turnaround time was for the unique COVID-19 mRNA vaccines two years ago.

Dr. Eric Topol, a precision medicine expert and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, noted that the country would reach 100% BA.5 in only a matter of weeks. He added that there’s little doubt more mutated variants lie ahead, whether or not they’re from the identical omicron family or a latest lineage altogether.

“Should we wait for a BA.5 booster? That can take months, and it ought to be noted it took greater than 7 months for the omicron BA.1 booster to be tested, a delay that’s exceedingly long and unacceptable relative to the timing of validation and production of the unique vaccines in 10 months during 2020,” Dr. Topol added.

In theory, the technology behind mRNA vaccines should make it easy to regulate boosters once an emerging Covid strain has been genetically sequenced. Within the meantime, the efficacy of the BA.1-based COVID-19 boosters against BA.4 and BA.5 remain questionable.

To assist curb the rising cases, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also taken other measures to combat COVID, including authorizing vaccines for infants and approving the Novavax vaccine, a standard, non-mRNA vaccine much like a flu shot.