Dr. Anthony Fauci said the recent Johnson & Johnson vaccine study, as well as one conducted by Novavax, is evidence that mutations in the coronavirus that lead to different strains “have clinical consequences” and should serve as a “warning” of that vaccines currently under development may need adjustments to combat new strains.
Fauci’s comments came hours after J&J released a study indicating that its unique vaccine proved 72% effective in the U.S. against moderate to severe coronavirus, but dropped to 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa, where one the “problematic” variant took over.
“What we now know from this study, that is, the J&J and Novavax study, that the antigenic variation, IE mutations that lead to different strains, have clinical consequences because, as you can see, even though the long-range effect towards serious disease is still treated reasonably well by vaccines, this is a warning to all of us that we will be dealing with, as the virus uses its devices to escape the pressure, mainly immunological, that we will continue to see the evolution of mutants, “he said during the coronavirus briefing at the White House on Friday.
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“So this means that we, as a government, companies, all of us who are in this together, will have to be nimble to be able to readily adjust, make versions of the vaccine that are actually specifically targeted to any mutation prevalent at any given time” , he said.
The so-called UK variant, identified as B.1.1.7, has already been detected in more than 300 cases in the USA, while P.1. mutation, which is believed to have originated from Brazil, was confirmed in a Minnesota case. The South African variant, which health officials previously described as worrying, was detected in two cases in South Carolina earlier this week. The cases have no epidemiological relationship, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, in the conference call on Friday.
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Walensky and Fauci said that increased genomic surveillance and testing of samples will strengthen the country’s ability to combat mutations and potentially avoid scenarios in which one dominates the other. Fauci said that the best defense, in addition to continuing public health measures, is to vaccinate as many people as possible to keep transmissibility low.
“It all tells us that it is an incentive to do what we have been saying all along – vaccinate as many people as we can, as quickly as possible,” he said. “Mutations occur because the virus has a field of action, so to speak, to mutate. If you stop that and stop replicating, the virus cannot mutate.”
According to him, the variant that is gaining strength in Los Angeles and California is the result of the amount of viruses in the community.
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“You can be sure that as long as there are many viruses in the community, mutants will evolve, this is what viruses do, particularly RNA viruses,” he said. “You are giving the virus an opportunity to adapt.”