New COVID-19 vaccine completely blocks viral transmission

An Adelaide-based company has developed a COVID-19 vaccine that completely blocks viral transmission to individuals who lack immunity, as well as offering protection for those inoculated.

The recombinant spike-protein based formula, developed by Vaxine, has achieved a world-first in the race to tackle COVID-19 — demonstrating that non-immune animals cannot contract the virus when exposed to those given the jab.

Vaxine Director Professor Nikolai Petrovsky said the findings are promising, given that no other approved COVID-19 vaccine has demonstrated such a strong result in viral transmissibility studies.

Any effects of the Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines on COVID-19 transmission remain unclear, with no animal studies published to show they can reduce transmission.

“With the global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines now underway there has been much talk about reopening borders and issuing vaccine passports. However, borders cannot easily be reopened unless we know for sure the vaccines we are using can prevent transmission,” Petrovsky said.

“For various reasons, some people cannot or will not be vaccinated — which means individual protection alone is not enough. We need a vaccine that can stop transmission within the community. This is why our preliminary findings on transmission are such welcome news.”

In a second major breakthrough, Vaxine has also demonstrated it can induce strong immunity against the seemingly more virulent COVID-19 variants seen in South Africa, Brazil and India.

Vaxine’s multivalent vaccine formula, still in animal testing phases, could be a game changer for the pandemic, in which experts have declared that “no-one is safe until everyone is”.

“The success stories of individual countries will mean nothing when it comes to ending a pandemic of this magnitude,” Petrovsky said.

“Until we have prevented virus transmission in every country, the virus will continue to run rampant, potentially evolving into new strains, year after year. These will then re-enter the country and potentially cause new outbreaks, even in vaccinated individuals.

“For this reason, we are delighted to have found a vaccine that can help protect us against almost all the COVID-19 variants in circulation.”

While these findings represent major milestones in the world’s quest to resume life as normal, several hurdles are yet to be overcome before the new vaccines get approval.

“Vaxine’s biggest challenge now is to quickly raise the financial resources to complete Phase 3 human clinical trials and get our COVID-19 vaccine manufactured at large scale. This is likely to be in the order of 50 million dollars,” Petrovsky said.

With much of the government’s budget tied up in multi-billion-dollar advance purchase orders with CSL and overseas manufacturers, securing these funds may be a challenge.

However, Petrovsky hopes his company’s track record in producing successful vaccines for previous pandemics will help give the government confidence to commit.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/James Thew