Although the COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be effective against the South African coronavirus variant – according to an infectious disease expert – the former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the strain can “prevent” other countermeasures, including antibodies drugs.
The South African virus variant, known as 501Y.V2, has raised serious concerns, and the strain has already been described as more infectious than the COVID-19 virus identified at the beginning of the pandemic. In South Africa, it quickly became dominant in the country’s coastal areas.
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Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner, told CNBC’s Shepard Smith on Tuesday that the strain appears to escape immunity from convalescent plasma and previous infection.
“The South Africa variant is very worrying now because it looks like it can avoid some of our medical countermeasures, particularly antibody drugs,” said Gottlieb, pointing to evidence from the Bloom Lab.
The variant involves mutations in the peak protein, including E484K, although the laboratory said the changes “reduce neutralization activity, but do not eliminate it”.
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Gottlieb stressed that immediate vaccination is crucial amid the worrying strain, which has already been identified in Austria, Switzerland, Japan, France, Zambia and the United Kingdom, according to a CNBC report.
“The vaccine may become an obstacle against these variants, which are really taking hold in the United States, but we need to accelerate the pace of vaccination,” said the former FDA chief.
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A senior World Health Organization official said on Tuesday that there is no indication that the virus is more or less transmissible than the mutant strain detected in the UK
“There is no indication that the 501Y.V2 variant has increased transmissibility compared to the UK variant,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical leader for COVID-19, during a briefing, noting that many studies underway in South Africa are analyzing the circulation and transmissibility variant in modeling and neutralization studies. “But there is no indication that it is more or less transmissible than the variant of the concern identified in the UK.”
That said, Britain’s health secretary warned on Monday that the coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa is a “very significant problem” and poses more risk than others.
“My concern is that it seems to be fair [easier] transmit than the new variant we saw here and obviously it has been a big challenge to control the new variant in the UK, “said Hancock, noting that two cases of the South African variant were detected in the UK on Monday.
Alexandria Hein and Madeline Farber of Fox News contributed to this report.