The COVID-19 variants dominated the headlines for weeks. But while officials said the public should not be concerned about the variants, they seemed a little more concerned over the weekend.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said during a recent press conference that B.1.1.7, the COVID-19 variant that circulated in the UK and spread to the US, “may be associated with a higher degree of mortality “. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also said during an MSNBC appearance that US officials are eyeing B.1.1.7, as well as the 501.V2 variant, also known as the South African variant.
Fauci said it was “a little more worrying” that the South African variant could negatively affect the monoclonal antibodies that were administered to treat the virus. “It appears that the vaccine’s efficacy further decreases, but we are still within that level of dampening the vaccines being effective against them,” he said.
“These are serious situations that we are following closely and, if necessary, we will adapt to that”, continued Fauci. He also stated that vaccines can be changed in the future, if necessary. This new information raises many questions about COVID-19 vaccines in relation to variants. Here’s what you need to know.
First, it is important to understand how COVID-19 vaccines work
There are currently two vaccines authorized in the USA for use against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19: one from Pfizer-BioNTech and the other from Moderna. Both use a new technology called messenger RNA (mRNA).
These vaccines work by encoding a part of the spike protein that is found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The mRNA vaccines use pieces of this SARS-CoV-2 encoded protein to create an immune response in your body, triggering it to create antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.
After that, your body eliminates the protein and mRNA, but the antibodies remain. What is not clear at this point is how long the antibodies last. However, they are expected to have staying power, infectious disease specialist Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety, told Yahoo Life.
How are the variants different from the ‘normal’ COVID-19?
There are several variants currently circulating, but the two that are receiving more attention are the United Kingdom strain (B.1.1.7) and the South African strain (501.V2). B.1.1.7 has several mutations in its genetic makeup, and some are in the virus’s spike protein, according to the CDC. Some of these mutations appear to make the virus more capable of attaching to its cells than “normal” SARS-CoV-2, making this new strain more infectious, Dr. Thomas Russo, professor and chief of infectious diseases at the University in Buffalo, told Yahoo Life.
The South African strain also has several mutations in its spike protein, says the CDC. As a result, everything seems to spread more easily than normal SARS-CoV-2.
How effective are COVID-19 vaccines against variants?
As of now, they appear to be effective in preventing COVID-19 in people who are vaccinated. Both vaccines have an efficacy rate of up to 95 percent against the traditional form of SARS-CoV-2. “This is very good and much better than we expected at the beginning,” says Russo.
Since the United Kingdom and South Africa variants emerged, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have stated that their vaccines are effective against the new strains in laboratory tests.
“The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine expresses the full-length spike protein from the SARS-COV-2 virus, allowing the generation of neutralizing antibody responses to multiple domains of the protein,” explained Moderna in a press release in late December. “The full-length spike protein has 1,273 amino acids, so although the recent variants involve multiple mutations, for example, up to eight amino acid changes in the B.1.1.7 strain spike protein, these represent less than a percent difference from peak protein encoded by Moderna’s vaccine. “
Moderna announced in a press release on Monday that, after actually testing its vaccine against the variants, there was “no significant impact” on the neutralizing titers – the concentration of antibodies in the body) – for B.1.1.7. But, the company said, there was a six-fold reduction in neutralization bonds with the South African variant. Despite this reduction, Moderna says that the neutralizing bonds “remain above the levels expected to be protective”.
Still, Moderna announced that it has a strategy for “proactively dealing with the pandemic as the virus continues to evolve.” The company plans to test an additional booster dose of its vaccine to see if it will raise antibodies against emerging strains, as well as a candidate for emerging variant boost to target the South African variant. “Moderna expects its mRNA-based booster vaccine to be able to further increase neutralization titers in combination with all leading candidate vaccines,” the company said in its press release.
So what happens now?
As far as is known, “vaccines are likely to be effective against variants. All the data show that they will be effective ”, says Adalja. Research on variants and vaccines so far has been in laboratories – not in people – which makes it difficult to know for sure how much a drop in antibodies in a laboratory setting really translates into the real world, he says. “Vaccines do not induce just one type of antibody”, explains Adalja. “There are a lot of antibodies, as well as T cell immunity, to be considered.” And all of this together can help prevent COVID-19, he says.
There is also this to consider, by Russo: there is a reasonable amount of room for maneuver, since vaccines are 95% protective. “We can lose some effectiveness from the 95 percent mark, but even if the effectiveness decreases, the probability is still that the virus will be less severe and less likely to cause a bad result in people who get the vaccine,” he says he. “The unresolved question at this point is what will be our effectiveness limit for changing the formulation and then producing the alternative vaccine? We are not there yet and it may never need to happen. “
Dr. David Cennimo, assistant professor of infectious diseases in pediatrics and medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told Yahoo Life that it is “comforting” to know that vaccine antibodies “still bind well” to prevent COVID-19. But, he adds, “I suspect that they don’t connect as well as they would a non-variant virus. That is why they are talking about the possibility of needing another vaccine in the future. “
As of this moment, Moderna is exploring a booster vaccine “just in case we need it,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told Yahoo Life. “I hope not,” he adds.
Overall, people should be sure that the vaccine is “so far, so good,” says Schaffner. “I don’t think we should be too excited about it,” he says. “We are all going to be vaccinated now with the vaccine that is available when we can, and if we need a booster in the future, we will deal with it.”
To latest coronavirus news and updates, go together on https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and immunocompromised continue to be at greater risk. If you have questions, consult the CDC‘sand Who is it resource guides.
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