Episode 44: How Effective are New Vaccines? Lessons from the US

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Nearly three years ago, the first case of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) was confirmed in Hong Kong. We have since experienced dramatic shifts in the ways we work, live, and interact. Now, we are seeing a gradual emergence from social distancing and the start of a new normal of life with Covid-19, in part thanks to rapidly developed and deployed vaccines and therapeutic treatments.

From the time the Covid-19 virus was first identified, the race was on for an effective vaccine with the hopes of stopping the pandemic, or at least mitigating its worst effects. Updated vaccines targeting a wider range of variants have been available in the United States for the past few months and have just been introduced in Hong Kong. Will these new vaccines lead to the end of the pandemic? What does data from the Untied States tell us?

Asia Society Hong Kong Center brings you regular updates on the coronavirus story in Hong Kong that has reverberations elsewhere in the world. We are pleased to present on-the-ground public health experts, mental health professionals, and internationally renowned specialists with the latest facts and evidence-based findings regarding this pandemic. In the past three years, we have recorded 43 episodes and welcomed more than 250,000 online views for this groundbreaking series.

In our latest update, we are pleased to host Lauren Rodda, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Immunology of the University of Washington. In this discussion, we will get an update on the latest vaccines and treatments, and their effectiveness in combating Covid in the United States. S. Alice Mong, Executive Director of Asia Society Hong Kong Center, will moderate the discussion.

Lauren Rodda earned her Ph.D. in Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco and is currently a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Marion Pepper's lab at the University of Washington where she uses antigen-specific tools to study the human immune response to infection and how it can be negatively modulated by pathogens or positively by vaccines. Since 2020, Dr. Rodda has been focused on how SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 vaccination induce durable, functional immune memory responses. Understanding how SARS-CoV-2-specific immune memory evolves with repeat vaccination and variant infection will help predict community patterns and design more broadly protective vaccines. At the same time, this work reveals fundamental dynamics of human immune responses previously obscured by complex infection histories that could help inform responses to other respiratory virus epidemics like those caused by influenza and RSV.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and participants and, unless expressly stated to the contrary, do not reflect the opinion, position or official policy of Asia Society Hong Kong, its members, or its committees. Asia Society Hong Kong does not endorse or approve, and assumes no responsibility for the content of the information presented.