Covid booster jabs could protect against other coronaviruses with ‘future pandemic potential’

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Covid booster vaccines could not only protect against SARS‑CoV‑2 – the virus behind the most recent pandemic – but also the next pandemic, researchers have found.

More than 13 billion doses of Covid vaccines have been administered across the world, providing widespread immunity and reducing hospitalisations and death, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

When the body is infected with a virus such as Covid, the immune system produces antibodies that will recognise the virus if it enters the body again and prevent another infection. A vaccination works in a similar way.

But a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge have suggested the Covid vaccine may also protect against future coronaviruses that risk “spilling over” from animals to humans.

“We’d expect the Covid vaccine to offer protection against today’s variants, but we were surprised to find that it also provides protection against some animal coronaviruses with future pandemic potential,” joint study author Grace West from the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious Disease (CITIID) said.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge found the Covid jab could protect against viruses with ‘pandemic potential’ (Getty/iStock)

For the study published in the journal npj Vaccines, researchers studied blood samples from older UK adults (average age around 69) who had received four Covid‑19 vaccine doses, including a recent bivalent booster that included both the original Wuhan strain and the Omicron variant.

The team tested how well antibodies in these blood samples could protect against different Omicron variants, as well as the SARS virus from 2003 and a range of closely-related coronaviruses known as “sarbecoviruses” found in bats and pangolins, some of which are considered potential threats for future outbreaks.

The antibodies didn’t work as well against newer Omicron variants than the original strain, showing how the virus has evolved to escape the immune response. It also wasn’t that effective at protecting against SARS, which researchers describe as a more distant coronavirus.

But it was much better at responding to two sarbecoviruses – one from bats and one from pangolins – even though these two viruses have never infected humans.

Several of the bat and pangolin viruses tested have the ability to enter human cells and are genetically close enough to SARS to raise concern about future spreads.

Rebecca Morse, also a joint author from CITIID, said: “We may already have a head start when it comes to protecting against certain future outbreaks. Boosters could reduce both severity and spread if spillovers were to occur, buying us vital time while we develop a more targeted vaccine.

“This will be particularly important for older and vulnerable populations, who are usually hardest hit in new pandemics.”