4 ms·
Rich countries may well have stock of H5N1 vaccine following the dangerous situation in the 00s. For now it's believed that the antibodies those vaccines induce
by etiam 2y ago
Rich countries may well have stock of H5N1 vaccine following the dangerous situation in the 00s. For now it's believed that the antibodies those vaccines induce would be somewhat useful against the current virus, at least one could hope they will prevent disaster until an updated vaccine can be developed and deployed.
A couple of example articles here (Probably abstract only unless you're hooked up with a good library. Sorry!):
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03189-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03189-y
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03256-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03256-4
Influenza is an RNA virus and thus less stable and particularly prone to change. I find it somewhat remarkable that the old vaccines are not useless by now, but they're pretty tenuous protection against this problem, so developing better and specific measures against what we're up against now is urgent.