JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The new COVID-19 variant identified in South Africa could escape the antibodies that attack it in blood plasma treatments of previously recovered patients and could reduce the effectiveness of the current vaccine line, scientists said on Wednesday .
Researchers are racing to establish whether vaccines being launched worldwide are effective against the so-called 501Y.V2 variant, identified by South African genomics experts last year in Nelson Mandela Bay.
“This strain exhibits a complete escape of three classes of therapeutically relevant monoclonal antibodies,” wrote the team of scientists from three South African universities working with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in an article published in the journal bioRxiv.
“In addition, 501Y.V2 shows a substantial or complete leakage of neutralizing antibodies in the convalescent plasma COVID-19,” they wrote, adding that their findings “highlight the prospect of reinfection … and may herald the reduced efficacy of vaccines based on current peak. “
The 501Y.V2 variant is 50% more infectious than previous ones, South African researchers said this week. It has spread to at least 20 countries since it was reported to the World Health Organization in late December.
It is one of several new variants discovered in recent months, including other discoveries for the first time in England and Brazil.
The variant is the main cause of the second wave of COVID-19 infections in South Africa, which reached a new daily peak above 21,000 cases earlier this month, well above the first wave, before dropping to around 12,000 a day .
Convalescent blood plasma from previous patients has not been effective when administered to critically ill patients who require intensive treatment for COVID-19, but it has been approved in several countries as an emergency measure.
British scientists and politicians have expressed concern that vaccines currently in use or in development may be less effective against the variant.
The newspaper said it remains to be seen how current vaccines are effective against 501Y.V2, which will only be determined by large-scale clinical trials. But the results showed the need for new vaccines to be designed to address the evolving threat, he said.
Reporting by Tim Cocks; Peter Graff’s Edition