B U S I N E S S
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11PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY 731; PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES (2)
Edited by
Rick Schine,
David Rocks, and
James E. EllisBloomberg Businessweek February 8, 2021Th ’ Still L t
Just two months ago, the prospects for beating the
novel coronavirus with highly effective vaccines
couldn’t have seemed better. Shots from Moderna
and the Pfizer-BioNTech partnership proved more
than 90% effective in preventing Covid-19 symptoms
in massive trials, surpassing the most optimistic fore-
casts. An end to the pandemic appeared imminent.
Yet pharma companies now suddenly face a
daunting challenge that few anticipated we’d see
so soon: an onslaught of fast-spreading and poten-
tially dangerous mutations of the virus. So even
as they ramp up production in the early stages of
a massive rollout, drugmakers have to retool their
vaccine strategies. That’s raised the possibility that
patients will need extra shots to protect against the
new strains—and that drugmakers could get a new
revenue stream that, for some, may prove lucrative.
The highly transmissable B.1.1.7 mutation first
identified in the U.K. is spreading across the U.S.
But the strains researchers are most worried about
come from South Africa and Brazil. The SouthAfrican variant has spread quickly across Africa and
has been seen in at least 24 countries elsewhere. It
was reported in South Carolina on Jan. 28 and in
Maryland two days later. The strain prominent in
Brazil shares one of the same key mutations.
Current Covid vaccines are formulated to fight
the form of the virus that was most prevalent last
year. But small changes occur as the virus repli-
cates, so as the pathogen spreads, it mutates into
viruses the original vaccines might not be properly
tailored to fight. The world has “allowed the virus
to infect 100 million people already,” says virolo-
gist David Ho, who heads the Aaron Diamond AIDS
Research Center at Columbia University. “That is
100 million chances for mutation.”
If that sounds terrifying, scientists say it should
be manageable with either new strain-specific vac-
cines or booster shots. It’s also likely to be good
for business. “It is increasingly likely” that wran-
gling the virus with a series of booster shots will
translate into a sustained revenue stream for○ With the emergence of coronavirus
variants,vaccinemakersare
racing to develop booster shots