Technology around developing COVID-19 vaccine may improve flu vaccine effectiveness, health expert says

Technology around developing COVID-19 vaccine may improve flu vaccine effectiveness, health expert says If there is a silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that the technology around developing a vaccine could change the effectiveness and universality of the influenza vaccine cnn

(CNN) - If there is a silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that the technology around developing a vaccine could change the effectiveness and universality of the influenza vaccine.

During a Thursday webinar with the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said there “has been an unprecedented use of new platforms to develop vaccines.”

“Remember, the flu vaccine, we still develop in eggs — chicken eggs,” she said. “Which seems really archaic, given that in six months we've developed Covid vaccines using these incredible platforms.”

“I think that if there's any silver lining to the Covid pandemic, it will be — at least one of them will be — hopefully transferring some of these rocket-sort of science, really, really dramatically fast technologies and platforms to the influenza vaccine arena.”  ...