Another recent study [1], discussed on This Week in Virology [2], also found T-cell immunity to be robust against mutations. However, there seems to be an open question of how well natural T cells, trained on the whole virus, will compare to T cells trained on vaccines that only have the spike protein or some other subset.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.27.433180v1" rel="nofollow">https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.27.433180v1</a>
[2]: <a href="https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-736/" rel="nofollow">https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-736/</a>
Sounds like good news.<p>There's also this bit at the end:<p>> Optimal immunity to SARS-Cov-2 likely requires strong multivalent T-cell responses in addition to neutralizing antibodies and other responses to protect against current SARS-CoV-2 strains and emerging variants, the authors indicate. They stress the importance of monitoring the breadth, magnitude and durability of the anti-SARS-CoV-2 T-cell responses in recovered and vaccinated individuals as part of any assessment to determine if booster vaccinations are needed.<p>I haven't heard a lot of discussion around that, but it seems pretty logical to me that we'll continue to see substantial numbers of new variants for this virus, and thus there's a good chance we'll eventually need booster vaccinations to maintain immunity, unless (until?) we could get the whole planet vaccinated and eradicate the disease.<p>But since eradication seems highly unlikely, I'm hoping that we'll find the basic vaccines we've come up with so far can be modified to target new variants much in the way we come up with a new flu shot every year and don't have to go through the same full approval and manufacturing ramp-up process.