“When we gave the vaccine directly to the lung, we saw a dramatic improvement in … immunity and protection in the lung itself and in the nose, leading to near complete protection against infection,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the senior author on the paper. Current vaccines raise antibodies in the blood, he said, but have a minimal effect in raising antibody and T-cell responses in the nose and the lungs — “where it really matters if you want to block infection.”

The results, Barouch argues, provide a powerful “proof of concept” for the idea that future boosters should be delivered using a device similar to an asthma inhaler. Read Full Article…

“The logistic complications certainly were not helpful, but I think that the low uptake is more than that. The low uptake reflects that most of the public is no longer concerned about Covid,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Barouch said HV.1 could be slighter better than EG.5 at spreading among people or infecting those with prior immunity to Covid — but not enough to cause alarm among scientists. “I would expect that it might be a slight increase in transmissibility or immune escape, which is why it appears to be dominating. Does it change any booster recommendations so far? Probably not,” he said. Read Full Article

New data released in recent days by a number of research labs, however, have suggested that existing immune defenses might hold up just fine against BA. 2.86. An academic laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Center for Virology & Vaccine Research, headed by Dr. Dan Barouch, found stronger than expected antibody responses to the strain in tests they ran. The results have yet to be published, but were summarized on social media by one of the scientists who conducted the study.

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“The combination of the large number of mutations and that it seemed to have emerged in many countries around the world at the same time raised the specter that it could be a variant that causes substantial concern,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “That’s why many research groups throughout the world have been trying to generate as much info as quickly as they could about it.”

In a preprint paper, a team led by Barouch reported that people’s immune systems were able to fight off BA.2.86 as well as, if not better than, other circulating variants.

The Beth Israel study also found that the immune response is robust against all variants — including BA.2.86 — after exposure to an XBB infection, which would likely include anyone who contracted COVID-19 since December 2022. That’s particularly good news for the upcoming booster, which is set to be released mid-September and was formulated based on XBB.1.5.

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