[ti:Expert: Regular Booster Vaccines Are the Future with COVID-19] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]Additional booster vaccines against the coronavirus [00:05.04]will be needed in the future, [00:08.04]said a leading British scientist who is studying the virus. [00:13.68]A booster is an extra shot [00:17.00]that increases or renews the effect of an earlier vaccine. [00:23.72]Boosters will be needed because the coronavirus [00:27.72]continues to change, or mutate. [00:32.20]Sharon Peacock is the head of COVID-19 Genomics UK, COG-UK. [00:41.28]She said countries must work together in their fight against the virus. [00:47.28]“We were always going to have to have booster doses; [00:51.80]immunity to coronavirus doesn’t last forever,” Peacock told Reuters. [00:59.44]She added that scientists were already changing the vaccine [01:04.32]to fight virus variants as they are found. [01:09.04]Peacock, a professor at Britain’s Cambridge University, [01:13.68]said she was sure that regular booster shots [01:17.04]would be needed to deal with future variants. [01:21.20]However, she said that the booster doses [01:24.40]could be developed and given to people over time. [01:28.84]Peacock set up COG-UK exactly a year ago [01:34.52]with the help of the British government’s [01:37.28]chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance. [01:41.84]The group is made up of public health experts and scientists [01:47.00]from several British universities. [01:50.40]It now holds more information about the virus’s genetics [01:55.60]than anywhere else in the world. [01:59.40]At places across Britain, COG-UK scientists [02:04.44]have sequenced over 349,000 genomes of the virus [02:10.88]out of a worldwide effort of about 778,000 genomes. [02:17.28]There are three main coronavirus variants, [02:21.16]which were first identified: Britain, known as B.1.1.7; [02:27.24]Brazil, known as P1; and South Africa, known as B.1.351. [02:35.80]Peacock said she is most worried about the South Africa variant. [02:40.40]Not only does it spread more easily, [02:43.60]but it also has a change in a gene mutation that can lower immunity. [02:49.72]That gene mutation is known as E484K. [02:56.08]With 120 million cases of COVID-19 around the world, [03:02.08]it is getting hard to keep track of all the different variants and names. [03:07.88]So, Peacock’s teams are thinking in terms of [03:11.60]“constellations of mutations,” she said. [03:15.84]“Constellation” in this case means a group of people [03:19.92]or things that are similar in some way. [03:24.04]She explained that scientists are thinking “about [03:27.60]what mutations or constellation of mutations [03:31.32]are going to be important biologically and different combinations [03:37.00]that may have slightly different biological effects.” [03:41.40]Peacock added that she and other experts [03:45.36]have had to accept they will be wrong [03:48.52]about some of their COVID-19 predictions. [03:53.00]“One of the things that the virus has taught me [03:57.00]is that I can be wrong quite regularly [04:00.88]- I have to be quite humble in the face of the virus [04:05.16]that we know very little about still,” she said. [04:10.20]“There may be a variant out there [04:13.00]that we haven’t even discovered yet.” [04:16.28]The coronavirus has killed 2.65 million people worldwide [04:23.16]since it began in China in late 2019. [04:26.96]There will be other pandemics in the future. [04:31.28]Peacock hopes that scientists will take what they have learned [04:35.72]from the coronavirus and be better prepared [04:39.16]for the next worldwide health crisis. [04:42.72]I’m Susan Shand. [04:45.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM