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Europe—not US—first to authorize Moderna's combo mRNA flu-COVID vaccine
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
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A full cohort study would have to be made to attest to that. But guessing from the efficacies of the corona vax, probably not a drastic difference.
Not a chance. As the flu virus mutates every so often, new vaccines will have to be made to adapt to the current epidemiology. It is a circular race.
Flu and corona are both "common cold type" viruses defeating resistance in some way. For coronaviruses that method is stopping the body from building effective resistance by all means possible, so that is why vaccines tend to not work too well.
For the flu it's the many variations and its tendency to change further and need new antibodies.
So I don't think a specific flu strain is hard to make a very effective vaccine for, but ofc this doesn't yet solve the flu problem.
The immense speed at which mRNA vaccines can be developed might improve that in the future, where this here could be one of many steps to get regulatory approval for blanket mrna and actually be permitted to change them at that pace.
In principle mRNA should let you crank you vaccines for new diseases/flu-strains in under a week. If this can fully stop the flu?... I doubt it. Whatever does solve it will probably make use of this tech though.
No. Flu, COVID, and the common cold are caused by different viruses that all lead to respiratory illnesses; influenzaviruses, coronaviruses and rhinoviruses respectively. These viruses target their own set of receptors and have their own mechanisms for multiplying. One technique used against one of them may not work on the other.
In theory, I agree that mrna could be faster; if there's some change in part of the virus, you can just edit the mrna sequence to reflect that change and ship it back to production instead of starting again from scratch. Will the logistics and the economics follow the theory? I guess we'll see.