Short Wave - COVID-19 Vaccines, Boosters And The Renaissance In Vaccine Technology

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

Health Correspondent Allison Aubrey updates us on the Biden Administration's goal to have 70 percent of U.S. adults vaccinated by the July 4. Plus, as vaccine makers plan for the possibility that COVID-19 vaccine boosters will be needed, they're pushing ahead with research into new-generation flu shots and mRNA cancer vaccines. Questions? Existential dread? Optimism? We'd love to hear it — write us at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hi, everyone. I'm Ritu Chatterjee, in the host chair for Emily Kwong for the next few weeks. And today we're back with our frequent Tuesday guest, health correspondent Alison Aubrey, for the latest in COVID news. Hi, Alison. Hey, Routou, great to be here. Great to have you. And what do you have for us today? Well, the country is inching closer to reaching this goal set by President Biden of vaccinating 70% of adults with at least one. one dose by July 4th, Independence Day. That's not even two weeks away. But some states lag behind.

And while the three vaccines authorized in the U.S. are very effective, it's possible that booster shots may be needed to maintain protection. And three, two, let's also talk about mRNA technology. We've all heard that term now, right? Totally. There's research underway to make mRNA vaccines for everything from flu to HIV possibly to even cancers. So today on the show, a COVID News Roundup with NPR health correspondent Alison Aubrey. You're listening to Sharkwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR. So, Alison, we're less than two weeks away from the 4th of July. Does it look like we will reach that goal of 70% of adults in the U.S. being vaccinated

with at least one dose by then? You know, at this point, I would say not quite, at least not nationwide. As I look at the numbers here, about 16 states, including. including all of the New England states, California, Hawaii, have surpassed the goal. That's the good news. Nationwide, as you say, we're at about 65% of adults. But only about half of adults have gotten one shot in the following states, Wyoming, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Wow. So the numbers really vary a lot as you zoom in locally and down to the county level, right? Yeah. For instance, in Branson, Missouri, where cases in hospitalizations have been on. the rise bucking the national trend. Only about 37% of adults have gotten one dose. I spoke to the director of the NIH, the National Institutes of Health about this. Dr. Francis Collins, here he is. I'm intensely concerned that here we are at a point where we have new variants arriving like this Delta variant, which is much more contagious and probably also more dangerous. Some of those communities

are really at risk. That is at risk of future outbreaks, but this is preventable given how safe and effective the vaccines are, as we have said many times on this podcast. So what should states be doing to reach those communities? Is this just about finding other ways to get the word out? Or is this about getting more vaccines to those areas and making it easier for people to get them? You know, it's about both. We've talked a lot here about pop-up vaccination clinics, going out into communities where there's hesitancy or lack of access. It's about all of that. Okay. And this comes at a time where a lot of people who are already vaccinated are wondering, will we need to get booster shots come this fall or next year?

So how will that decision be made? Well, what's happening right now is that public health officials, scientists, and the companies that make the vaccines are all tracking how well immunity holds up in people who've been vaccinated. And this is going to take a while. Here's Dr. Francis Collins again. We need to figure out whether the antibody response from the vaccines is going to stay at a high end. enough level to be protective. And we also need to ask whether the new variants that are appearing change the answer to that. So there are really two things under review here, Reto, both the extent immunity can wane and whether variants undermine the effectiveness of the vaccine. Right. And scientists have been following people who are already vaccinated to answer those

questions, right? That's exactly right. And remember, before the vaccines were authorized for use, beginning last December, tens of thousands of people were in the clinical trials to test whether they were safe and effective. So one way to gauge waning immunity is just to check in on people who were among the first to receive the vaccines. We are following those people and we can start to see if somebody has a breakthrough infection, well, what was their antibody level? And that's probably something you want to try to avoid dropping down to. Pretty soon, I think we'll have a better handle on that because that data is being collected right now. And so far, Dr. Collins says it looks pretty good. Immunity seems to be holding up seven or eight months into this.

And I'm wondering, could it be that they might learn that some people's immunity holds up better than others so that not everyone will need a booster? You know, that is possible. I mean, it's well known that as people age, immunity is not quite as good. Already we see older people get a higher dose of the flu shot. So it's reasonable to, you know, it's reasonable to. that scientists may see some people having more durable immunity to the coronavirus. And even beyond age, there could be variability. Dr. Collins says the promise of personalized medicine is to be able to assess this. If we come up with a really reliable way to assess whether somebody's immunity is still good enough to provide protection, might we be in a place where instead of saying, okay, everybody, after one year you should get a booster, maybe we'd have an actual simple test to say,

okay, you're one of those people that should get it at nine months. And you're one of those people where, gosh, it looks pretty good. You could wait another year before you get a booster. That'd be a really efficient way to do it. Now, that is not reality yet. There's no easy, cheap way to do this, but he says it would be nice going forward. I'd say for now what is clear is that both policymakers and the vaccine companies are preparing for the possibility that boosters maybe need it.

So what does that look like? I mean, have the companies already started making boosters? Yes, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine are studying a kind of mix-and-match approach to boosters. People who have been vaccinated with any of the authorized vaccines will get a Moderna shot as a booster. The idea is to see if people who received one vaccine initially will have an immune response to a different vaccine as a booster. Wow. So if their experiment is successful, that would mean that, say, if I got the J&J vaccine, I may be fine getting a Moderna booster. That's right. If we find out boosters are needed, that could be the case. And are the pharmaceutical companies designing the boosters with the new variants in mind?

Yeah, that's been going on for months. I mean, back in January, when it looked like the beta variant could be a problem. Moderna quickly created a new version of its vaccine. The folks that Moderna told me they basically did this over the course of a weekend. Wow, that's fast. It really is fast, and it was designed specifically to fend off this beta variant. and within a month they had started a clinical trial. Now, it was possible to do it so quickly because of the technology that Moderna is using. Right, the MRNA technology that we've all heard so much about. That's exactly right.

Basically what they're doing is making messenger molecules that act kind of like a software that instructs the body to mount an immune response to a specific virus. And Dr. Collins says part of the benefit seems to be that this technology is very versatile. This is one of the amazing things about the messenger RNA strategy is it's very readily adaptable to putting together a booster that goes after a different virus variant because basically you just change the code to match the new threatening virus. You're just tweaking this. And otherwise, it's all the same process that's been intensely studied and seems to have worked really well. So in the future, the companies behind this technology, including Moderna, Pfizer, and Biotech,

they all aim to use the same MRNA technology to create new vaccines beyond COVID, everything from a new flu vaccine to possibly an HIV vaccine to vaccines aimed at preventing a relapse of different types of cancer. In fact, there are already multiple clinical trials underway. So really, the COVID vaccines were the first big success story for this MRN. technology. What else is in the pipeline, Allison? So there's a bunch of trials that are already started, including one for people who've had colorectal cancer, which is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. There's typically a fairly high risk of relapse, and currently there isn't much to offer beyond chemotherapy. So there's definitely room for improvement here. I spoke to Dr. Scott

Copitz. He's a medical oncologist and professor at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas. He's got patients enrolled in a trial to test whether an experimental mRNA vaccine can help prevent a relapse of the disease. This is, you know, exciting technology. And the hope of this study is to have a vaccine to generate an immune response that can help stave off a recurrence of the cancer. And so it really represents a huge opportunity in a large number of patients to improve outcomes. You know, it's early days. It'll be several years before it's clear whether this is beneficial, whether it works. But there's a real renaissance and vaccine research coming out of the pandemic. Alison Aubrey, NPR's health correspondent, thank you so much for your time.

Really appreciate it. Great to be here. This episode was edited by Joe Neal and Gries, produced by Rebecca Ramirez and fact-tracked by Indykera. The audio engineers were Dennis Nielsen, Josh Newell, and Leo Del Agila. I'm Ritu Chateji. Thanks for listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR. What happens after a police officer shoot someone who's unarmed? For decades in California, internal affairs investigations,

how the police police themselves were secret. Until now, listen to On Our Watch, a podcast from NPR and KQED.