Can we create a universal Covid vaccine?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can scientists develop a vaccine which can combat the coronavirus and all its variants? There have been three lethal outbreaks caused by coronaviruses this century: SARS in 2002, MERS in 2012 and now SarsCov2. Scientists predict we will eventually encounter SarsCov3. That’s why the race is on to develop a universal vaccine to combat the coronaviruses and variants we know about, and the ones we have yet to confront. But attempts to create a universal vaccine for viruses such as influenza and HIV have been going on for decades - without success.
Before 2020, proposals to create a vaccine against coronaviruses were not thought important enough to pursue since many just cause the common cold. Now that we understand their real threat, can scientists succeed in creating a vaccine to fight this large family of viruses,?
Produced and presented by Sandra Kanthal Editor: Emma Close Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Jacqui Johnson Sound: James Beard and Rod Farquhar
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
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| 0:41.0 | I'm Sandra Cantol and in this edition I'll be looking at |
| 0:44.8 | attempts underway around the world to create a universal coronavirus vaccine. |
| 0:49.6 | How many letters of the Greek alphabet have you learned since the start of the pandemic? |
| 0:57.0 | Alpha Vita, Rama, VELTA, epsilon, zeta, |
| 1:02.0 | it's been a really difficult two years as variants of SARS Kove 2, which causes COVID-19, |
| 1:08.0 | chase us around the globe with wave after wave of infection. So scientists are now in a race not against each other |
| 1:18.7 | but against the virus and if they can make it past the finish line, well there's a prize that awaits us all. |
| 1:26.9 | A universal vaccine would be the holy grail. Frankly, we have to get away from the old paradigm of one bug, one drug, as they call in the |
| 1:37.6 | world of science, or in this case, one virus, one vaccine, and there are serious, impressive, dedicated scientists all around the world focused on this goal. |
| 1:51.0 | We've made amazing progress in terms of generating the vaccines that we have to |
| 1:54.9 | date, but we need to make a step change in the way that we can prepare ourselves and the |
| 2:01.0 | universal vaccine approach is to try and bring us into a position whereby we're not continuously chasing that virus, |
| 2:09.0 | but we have something readily available that can protect against these different variants |
| 2:15.1 | that are cropping up as the virus mutates through time. |
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