The US Army is poised to release the results of a trial into a universal vaccine that could beat all current and future strains of Covid-19. The vaccine has gone through animal testing and is now in human trials, with the results due to be published, according to the Independent.
Luke O’Neill, professor of biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin, told Newstalk on Thursday: “There’s a massive effort happening in the US at the moment, trying to make what’s called a ‘universal vaccine’. It’s a great goal to have.”
He said the vaccine uses fragments of the virus attached to a protein molecule, adding: “[It] went into monkeys and amazingly it protects against Sars, the original virus, SARS-CoV-2, Alpha, Beta, Delta, Omicron. It protected against all of those [viruses] in monkeys. They’re in the middle of a phase one trial in humans – any day now actually, we’re going to get the data from that phase one trial soon.
“That’s very, very hopeful that [the] US Army-derived vaccine could be the first universal vaccine against Covid-19.”
New variants of Covid have been responsible for recent peaks in infection, hospitalisation and death - with Omicron BA.2 now the dominant strain in the UK. This week the UK Health Security Agency said it had detected 1,300 cases of a new variant combining strains of Omicron - called XE.
