HHS touts universal flu, coronavirus vaccine initiative while casting doubt on future of seasonal Covid-19 shots

The US Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday that it aims to accomplish within four years a scientific feat that hasn’t been achieved for the past 45: the development of a universal flu vaccine that could protect against multiple virus strains with pandemic potential, including H5N1 avian influenza.

The US Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday that it aims to accomplish within four years a scientific feat that hasn’t been achieved for the past 45: the development of a universal flu vaccine that could protect against multiple virus strains with pandemic potential, including H5N1 avian influenza. “Generation Gold Standard is a paradigm shift,” National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement on the new initiative. “It extends vaccine protection beyond strain-specific limits and prepares for flu viral threats – not just today’s, but tomorrow’s as well – using traditional vaccine technology brought into the 21st century.” HHS said the project, being developed in-house at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is targeting US Food and Drug Administration approval of universal influenza vaccines in 2029, with human clinical trials scheduled to start next year. The Wall Street Journal first reported that it will be funded with $500 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a figure confirmed by a spokesperson for HHS. “I hope it works,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He noted that he trained in a flu lab in the early 1980s that was working on a universal flu vaccine, and one still hasn’t been developed. “It’s not for lack of effort, and it’s not for lack of expertise, and it’s not for lack of money that we don’t have a universal influenza vaccine. It’s just really hard to do.” Flu viruses are wily because they mutate from season to season, sometimes significantly, and because efforts to protect against all – or many – strains at once haven’t succeeded, we get updated flu shots each year to protect us against the latest circulating strains. A similar paradigm has unfolded for Covid-19 vaccines since they were first authorized in the height of the pandemic at the end of 2020. HHS’s new initiative also aims to develop universal coronavirus vaccines that could provide protection against not just the virus that causes Covid-19 – SARS-CoV-2 – but its cousins SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV.