New reports suggest that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for COVID-19 may protect people against new variants of the coronavirus, including a first seen in South Africa called B.1.351.
The reports were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
For the Pfizer vaccine, researchers at Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch genetically created the virus to carry some of the mutations found in B.1.351 and tested them on blood samples collected from 15 people who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
Although blood serum samples produced less antibody activity, it was still enough to neutralize the virus, they wrote in a letter to the newspaper.
Separately, a team from the National Institutes of Health and Moderna published a letter in the NEJM outlining details of an experiment that found similar results: The Modern vaccine produced an antibody response to variants. In the case of variant B.1.351, the response was less robust, but not enough of a reduction to make the vaccine work less, the researchers said.
“Despite this reduction, the levels of neutralizing titration with (the variant discovered in South Africa) remain above the levels expected to be protective,” the company said in a statement.
With the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, no reduction in vaccine effectiveness was found for variant B.1.1.7 seen for the first time in the UK, the researchers said.
However, there are still many doubts about the degree to which vaccines offer protection against variants, said Stephen Morrissey, the executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, in a podcast posted on Wednesday on the NEJM website.
While current research shows that vaccines can produce neutralizing antibodies against variants, “they don’t actually inform us directly about protection or medical activity, and we have to be careful about what we think is the current level of protection,” Morrissey said.
The research by Moderna and Pfizer to date involving the variants involved testing blood samples to see if vaccines produce antibodies. But immunity against COVID-19 is also likely to involve a cellular response, which the research has not addressed so far.
Morrissey said there needs to be more “human studies to better define what protection means and then how to optimize the vaccine.”
Morrissey noted reports involving people who already had coronavirus and are now being reinfected by a variant, suggesting that natural immunity has limitations against the coronavirus.
“And some of these patients developed a serious illness, which is worrying,” he said.
Without a doubt, “there are still a lot of unanswered questions,” said Jeremy J. Farrar, a British medical researcher, in the podcast.
This includes the role of antibodies against cellular responses in preventing coronavirus; how long vaccines can provide protection and whether vaccines affect the transmission of the virus or simply prevent people from becoming seriously ill.
“There is a lot more research that needs to be done over the next two years,” said Farrar. “We need to get answers to these questions, as they will be critical questions in the long run.”
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