As COVID-19 becomes a business, vaccine makers confront thorny pricing questions

eating back the coronavirus pandemic increasingly looks to be a long-term project. New, more transmissible strains that reduce the potency of vaccines will likely require repeat immunizations or updated shots to be fully tamed.

Drugmakers are now drawing up their response. As a first step, they plan to test whether additional boosters of authorized vaccines will be enough to protect against new strains, or whether they’ll need to adjust for mutations from the original SARS-CoV-2 virus that jumped into humans one year ago.