WASHINGTON | The White House was organizing a “summit” on Tuesday to promote the development of “new generation” vaccines against COVID-19, that is to say conferring longer-lasting and broader protection than current vaccines.

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The summit brought together scientists, officials from the administration of Joe Biden, but also representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, including Pfizer and Moderna.

If the vaccines already authorized continue to protect very well against serious cases of the disease, the mutations of the different variants of the virus that have appeared over time have reduced their effectiveness, in particular in preventing infection and transmission, and reminders have quickly become required.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases and adviser to Joe Biden on the health crisis, said efforts toward next-generation vaccines rest on “two pillars”: “pan-coronavirus vaccines” , and “mucosal vaccines”.

Concretely: a universal vaccine targeting all coronaviruses, or a nasal spray type vaccine.

This second possibility would stimulate an immune response “at the local level”, in order to strike the virus very quickly “where it enters”.

“The goal is to not just protect against disease, but to protect against its acquisition, and with that, transmission,” Fauci explained.

Many studies are currently underway to develop this type of vaccine.

Regarding a universal vaccine against all coronaviruses, two strategies are being studied, detailed Dr. Fauci: using an element common to all the viruses targeted, or a “mosaic” approach, taking multiple parts of the virus.

The current vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer indeed target the virus's only Spike protein, on its surface, but this is susceptible to mutations.

Achieving such a universal vaccine remains “ambitious” for the moment, however, warned Dr. Fauci, stressing the important role to be played by the pharmaceutical industry in this goal.

In the meantime, the US executive has asked the companies supplying the current vaccines to update their formula so that it confers enhanced efficacy against the Omicron variant specifically. The government is hoping for a major recall campaign with this new formula in the fall.