Immunologist says technology can keep up with COVID variants News Highlights: Immunologist says technology can keep up with COVID variants While public health and infectious disease experts are wary of emerging coronavirus variants, particularly one in South Africa showing signs of evading immune responses, a Harvard public health expert predicted that technology and science would eventually prevail. “I don’t think the virus will win this war,” he said Barry Bloom, the Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson Research Professor of Health and former Dean of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Bloom, speaking to one Facebook Live Event “The COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout: What’s Ahead?” On Friday, said viruses routinely mutate, but only occasionally acquire new properties, such as the more contagious British variant now spreading in 60 countries, including the US. However, if necessary, the same technology that produced two effective coronavirus vaccines in record time could be used to create a new one to fight against “a total escape variant,” a mutated virus unaffected by current vaccines.