Developing a new version of the vaccine would probably face significant regulatory hurdle, and thus take time.
According to Pfizer, it should take 100 days. If they would have started that when it become clear that Delta will be soon the prevailing variant, we would have had access to the updated vaccine for a few months.
There’s an expectation for new variants to become dominant every few months.
The best prediction seems to be those new variants will be varients of what’s currently the most common variant and thus a vaccine that’s updated against delta will be nearer to new variants.
The vaccine industry is either way going to sell as many vaccines as it can produce for the foreseeable future.
That’s an argument why the companies don’t want to do it on their own but not one for the lack of political pressure on them. It would be one of the main things a politician like Biden could do to actually fight the pandemic if that would be a political priority.
According to Pfizer, it should take 100 days. If they would have started that when it become clear that Delta will be soon the prevailing variant, we would have had access to the updated vaccine for a few months.
The best prediction seems to be those new variants will be varients of what’s currently the most common variant and thus a vaccine that’s updated against delta will be nearer to new variants.
That’s an argument why the companies don’t want to do it on their own but not one for the lack of political pressure on them. It would be one of the main things a politician like Biden could do to actually fight the pandemic if that would be a political priority.