By the time new vaccines arrive here, we might be seeing a different COVID strain emerge.

New COVID vaccines are being produced faster than ever before, but the rate of new variants and sub-variants is making it hard to make sure the most up-to-date vaccine is being deployed, says infectious diseases specialist Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake.

Speaking ahead of his 30 August COVID Update lecture, Professor Senanayake said: “The rate at which new variants and sub variants have appeared has caused us to be behind the eight ball.”

The UK government recently provisionally approved Moderna’s bivalent original/omicron vaccine.

The bivalent vaccine – with half of the dose targeting the original virus strain (D614G) and half targeting the BA.1 strain – looks on track for provisional registration by the TGA in Australia too.

“This basically means that Moderna can fill in the paperwork to get provisional registration – and from there the vaccine can be used in Australia,” says Professor Senanayake.

“It takes a little while to go through this, so we are still a few weeks away from having the BA.1 vaccine here. Even then we don’t have a manufacturing plant in Australia for it, so it will have to be imported,” he says.

“Meanwhile the US is instead concentrating on a combined BA.4 or BA.5 specific omicron vaccine, which they hope will be available by their Autumn. While BA.1 is the dominant variant at the moment, the US wants to wait until they’ve got the BA.5 vaccine.

”For Australia, I think it’s reasonable to get vaccines for both variants, really. When the newer one becomes available, we should position ourselves to get both, and I’d be using the BA.4 or 5 preferentially.

“But of course, until the end of this year, I think the vaccines we have in the pipeline will be effective thanks to the antibodies present. It really all depends on what’s available down the line and what variant is dominant.

“So, I think that the real the Holy Grail is just trying to get a more universal vaccine where it doesn’t really matter if there’s a new variant or not.”

Professor Senanayake’s COVID Update on 30 August will also cover monkeypox and other emerging infections.

“There really will be a lot to talk about this session, as the news comes in of local monkeypox transmission which we already have a vaccine for, along with international appearances of Langya virus, Tomato Flu and the resurgence of polio in New York,” he says.

Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake is an infectious diseases physician and Director of Hospital at Canberra Hospital. He is a lecturer at the Australian National University Medical School, as well as a conjoint lecturer at the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at UNSW.

Professor Senanayake will be providing a COVID Update at the upcoming Healthed webcast on 30 August – Register here.