UK Vaccine Task Force Chair Kate Bingham said on Tuesday that first-generation COVID-19 vaccines are “likely to be incomplete” and may “not work for everyone”.
“However, we do not know if we will ever have the vaccine. It is important to be careful against complacency and over-optimism,” Binham wrote in an article published in The Lancet Medical Journal.
“First-generation vaccines are incomplete, and we must be prepared to prevent infection and reduce symptoms, and even then they may not work for everyone or for long,” she said.
Bingham writes that the vaccine taskforce has found that “many, and possibly, these vaccines could fail,” focusing on vaccines that are thought to have immunosuppressive effects in a population over 65 years of age.
She said the global production capacity for vaccines was not enough for billions of doses, adding that the United Kingdom’s production capacity was “equally scarce”.
Earlier on Tuesday, a study by scientists at Imperial College London found that antibodies against the COVID-19 were rapidly declining in the British population over the summer, suggesting that post-infection protection may not last long and increase the likelihood of a weakening of immunity in society.
