Millions of pounds have been spent to develop variant-proof Covid vaccines, which could prove just as effective against future strains than the ones currently in circulation.
Scientists fear that current jabs could offer little protection against new versions of the Sars-Cov-2 virus – putting the world back to square one.
The international Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, to which the UK has contributed £260 million, is backing two projects. Israeli firm MigVax has been given £3.2 million to advance a vaccine pill known as MigVax-101, which would work as an easy-to-administer booster, and the University of Saskatchewan in Canada has been given £3.7 million to develop its own version.
Both are ‘subunit’ vaccines that introduce chunky fragments of the virus into the body. They are not able to infect cells but can teach the immune systems how to recognize and eliminate the virus. Because they show the body larger parts of the virus than today’s vaccines, they are thought to be better at protecting against multiple variants.

Millions are spent on developing Covid vaccines which can be resistant to future strains.