Scientists applaud the development of effective vaccines to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The vaccine development represents a “stunning scientific achievement for the world … unprecedented in the history of vaccinology,” Axios reports, quoting Dr. Dan Barouch, an expert on virology and vaccines at Harvard Medical School who worked on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

According to Axios, it usually takes at least 10 years to create an effective inoculation against a disease, and we still don’t have an effective drug for HIV or malaria. However, we now have a choice of several COVID-19 vaccines that were developed in less than a year. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are the first to use mRNA technology to teach our bodies how to successfully mount an immune response against the virus.

The AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson drugs, which use more traditional mechanisms to protect against the COVID-19, have also been clinically proven to prevent infections and deaths from the coronavirus. All four candidates have exceeded the Food and Drug Administration’s threshold for efficacy.

The only drawback, according to Axios, is that the variants we are now seeing across the world are threatening to reduce the effectiveness of the vaccines. For example, according to The New York Times, the AstraZeneca COVID-19 candidate has been shown ineffective against the South African mutation. Scientists in South Africa halted the use of the drug after clinical trials showed that participants were not protected from mild or moderate illness caused by the more contagious variant.

According to Axios, that is exactly why we must increase our rollout of existing vaccines to inoculate as many people as possible so that the virus will not have countless opportunities to mutate.

Experts say that we may need booster shots to address the variants but waiting for a new vaccine to deal with every mutation would only create more chances for the virus to spread. Both Moderna and Pfizer have announced that they are already working on booster shots to improve protection.

According to Fast Company, since both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use genetically-based mRNA technology to neutralize the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, a simple tweak to the genetic coding of the vaccines could make them more effective against mutations as long as we do not allow the variants to get a foothold in the country before the vaccine changes can be implemented.

Dr. Drew Weissman, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who specializes in mRNA technology and vaccine research, says revising the genetic codes of the vaccines could help our immune cells identify the new invader. According to Fast Company, such a revision could be done in around six weeks.

According to Axios, we must continue funding the development of effective vaccines and improving our distribution to help fight against future pandemics.

“Good funding, great science and great collaboration with the regulatory agencies — that’s how they were able to do something that I didn’t think could be done in a year,” said Dr. Mark Slifka, a professor at Oregon Health & Science University specializing in immunology.