By LAU­RAN NEER­GAARD | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

(AP) — Mod­er­na’s ex­per­i­men­tal COVID-19 vac­cine that com­bines its orig­i­nal shot with pro­tec­tion against the omi­cron vari­ant ap­pears to work, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Wednes­day.

COVID-19 vac­cine mak­ers are study­ing up­dat­ed boost­ers that might be of­fered in the fall to bet­ter pro­tect peo­ple against fu­ture coro­n­avirus surges.

Mod­er­na’s pre­lim­i­nary study re­sults show peo­ple giv­en the com­bi­na­tion shot ex­pe­ri­enced an eight-fold in­crease in virus-fight­ing an­ti­bod­ies ca­pa­ble of tar­get­ing the omi­cron mu­tant, the com­pa­ny an­nounced.

To­day’s COVID-19 vac­cines all are based on the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the coro­n­avirus. They’re still pro­vid­ing strong pro­tec­tion against se­vere dis­ease, hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and death even af­ter the ap­pear­ance of the su­per-con­ta­gious omi­cron vari­ant -- es­pe­cial­ly if peo­ple have had a boost­er dose.

But the virus con­tin­ues to mu­tate rapid­ly in ways that let it evade some of the vac­cines’ pro­tec­tions and cause milder in­fec­tions.

So, U.S. reg­u­la­tors, and the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, are con­sid­er­ing whether to or­der a change in the vac­cine recipe for a new round of boost­er shots in the fall -- when cold weath­er and kids re­turn­ing to school are ex­pect­ed to dri­ve yet an­oth­er surge.

Key ques­tions: How to make that change with­out los­ing the con­tin­ued strong pro­tec­tion against COVID-19’s worst out­comes? And what’s the right vari­ant to tar­get? Af­ter the huge win­ter omi­cron surge, that mu­tant’s ge­net­i­cal­ly dis­tinct sib­lings now are the main threats, in­clud­ing one that’s fu­elling the cur­rent U.S. wave of in­fec­tions.

The Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion has set a meet­ing in late June for its sci­en­tif­ic ad­vis­ers to de­bate those ques­tions and eval­u­ate da­ta from vac­cine mak­ers’ tests of po­ten­tial new for­mu­las. Pfiz­er al­so is study­ing a com­bi­na­tion shot, what sci­en­tists call a bi­va­lent vac­cine.

Mod­er­na said its new study found that a month af­ter the com­bo shot, re­cip­i­ents har­boured high­er omi­cron-fight­ing an­ti­body lev­els — and cross-pro­tec­tion against oth­er pri­or vari­ants — than the orig­i­nal vac­cine trig­gers. How­ev­er, an­ti­bod­ies nat­u­ral­ly wane so it’s not clear how long the pro­tec­tion against in­fec­tion will last.

The study was per­formed in 437 peo­ple, and safe­ty was sim­i­lar to to­day’s boost­ers, Mod­er­na said. The re­sults were an­nounced in a press re­lease and haven’t un­der­gone sci­en­tif­ic re­view.

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The As­so­ci­at­ed Press Health and Sci­ence De­part­ment re­ceives sup­port from the Howard Hugh­es Med­ical In­sti­tute’s De­part­ment of Sci­ence Ed­u­ca­tion. The AP is sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for all con­tent.