COVID-19 variants first detected in the UK and South Africa and now circulating globally are not a current threat to the effectiveness of the first vaccines, but mutations will be monitored closely because “they can be a problem,” NIAID director Anthony Fauci told Axios.
The big picture: Vaccinations are ongoing, albeit with a slow start. The goal of returning to normal depends on reaching 70% -85% of herd immunity in the population, says Fauci. While there are concerns that mutations could bypass vaccines, he says they pose more of a problem for certain treatments than for vaccines.
What is happening: Viruses mutate frequently, but these changes are often small and not cause problems with treatments or vaccines. Public health authorities have been tracking the SARS-CoV-2 variants closely.
B.1.1.7 it doesn’t seem to be more virulent or to prevent the vaccine’s effect, based on what British doctors are saying, says Fauci.
- B.1.1.7 is more transmissible because it binds more quickly to the ACE2 receptor, which is how the virus enters cells.
- This increases the need for faster vaccinations, says Carlos del Rio, a distinguished professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine.
- “If R-nada goes from 2.5 to 2.9 in a totally naive population, after 10 cycles of transmission, instead of 9,000 infected people, you have 42,000 infected people”, warns del Rio.
The 501.V2 variant is “a little more worrying about the possibility of interfering with some of the monoclonal antibodies”, based on preliminary results, says Fauci.
- Treatments with monoclonal antibodies target precisely a specific region of the virus and “if the mutation occurs in that epitope, it can avoid the effect” of the treatment, he says.
- Vaccines, on the other hand, “induce a polyclonal response against several different aspects of the spike protein”, points out Fauci. “For something to really circumvent the vaccine’s effectiveness, there must be several mutations that are all in the right places. “
What they are watching: Scientists are monitoring the strains and testing them against vaccines.
- “If it doesn’t affect the vaccine, you’re good to go. If it does, you have to make some minor modifications to the vaccine to be able to get around the changes that occur in the mutations, ”says Fauci.
- With the “plug-and-play” nature of mRNA vaccines, it is much easier to change the composition of these vaccines, he adds.
- And because there is now a lot of data on the mRNA-based vaccine platform, “the FDA is likely to consider this just a strain change, which does not require starting from scratch,” he says.
The final result: “You always have to take these things seriously, follow them closely and hope there isn’t a problem. But, if there is, you have to adjust to that ”, says Fauci. “And now we have the technology to do that quite easily.”