SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – With high COVID-19 infection rates across the nation and no mask mandate on the horizon, experts are reconsidering how to tackle future variants.
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Dr. David Wohl, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at University of North Carolina School of Medicine, told KCBS Radio's "Ask An Expert" a reconstruction of the COVID-19 vaccine may be necessary.
"We've learned a lot over the pandemic and I think we're getting better at anticipating what's going to happen, but what we all realize is we need vaccines and therapeutics that cover multiple barriers," Wohl said. "We can't be specific, we have to be broad and I think there's a lot of work just going into that."
The question now is how do we make vaccines that don't just look at one part of the virus, Wohl asked. The answer may be found in the approach to therapeutics.
"The therapeutics that we're using right now, so Paxlovid and Molnupiravir, these are two oral medicines, they work against all the variants to date because they look at a central mechanism and interfere with that," Wohl said.
Maybe a coronavirus vaccine should focus on the central part of the virus that is shared among different variants, the North Carolina School of Medicine Professor hypothesized.
Until one such vaccine is created, a fool proof way to evade a COVID-19 infection is by masking up and staying socially distanced.
"One good thing about masks and about social distancing is that they're agnostic to variants. The variant can't get around a well fitting mask and a variant is not going to be transmitted over a very far distance indoors, so these are strategies that can help us regardless," Wohl advised.
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