'Early Results Promising For RNA COVID Vaccine In Older Adults,' Univ. of Minn., NIH

[intrepidity]

7. The technology can accommodate this easily

mRNA vaccines are the most flexible imaginable, in the sense that all it is, is a string of letters (well, nucleotides) that encodes the protein of interest.

To make a vaccine against a mutation would be as simple as changing a letter in the code.

I imagine that, with time, such variants will become available. The technology is not the issue.

What would be an issue, is how the body reacts to the variant. Since these proteins are designed to provoke an immune response in the body, and because our immune systems are very complex, each new version would have to undergo clinical trials, to not only test how well they neutralize the (now mutant) virus, but also whether there are any inadvertant side effects.

IOW, it's a process. That takes time.