The good news is that the new mutations in the COVID-19 coronavirus found in Britain, South Africa, Brazil and other countries do not yet appear to be inherently more deadly than other variants. The bad news is that because they spread more easily, more people become infected and die – and the increase in infections is giving the virus more chances to mutate. Worse, the new mutations appear to modestly limit the effectiveness of the Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines, the researchers reported on Wednesday.
Researchers at Rockefeller University and the National Institutes of Health in New York collected blood from 10 people inoculated with the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine and tested these samples with variants of the coronavirus from Great Britain, South Africa and Brazil. With some of the samples, antibodies stimulated by the vaccine were up to three times less effective in blocking the virus from infecting cells, said Dr. Michel Nussenzweig de Rockefeller. “It is a small difference, but it is definitely a difference.”
Neither these findings, nor separate and more promising Pfizer researches have been peer-reviewed. Pfizer said on Wednesday that a second study showed that its vaccine is equally effective against several mutations found in the UK. Moderna and AstraZeneca are also testing their vaccines against various mutations.
Vaccines still protect people against the development of COVID-19, say immunologists. “We don’t want people to think that the current vaccine is already out of date. This is not absolutely true,” said E. John Wherry of the University of Pennsylvania. “There is still immunity here … a good level of protection,” but the mutations “actually reduce how well our immune response is recognizing the virus.” Vaccines may need to be adjusted – a fairly easy process for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines – and countries should not rely on vaccines alone, experts warn.
“We have an arms race between vaccines and the virus,” said Dr. Buddy Creech, vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University The Associated Press. “The slower we launch the vaccine worldwide, the more opportunities we will give this virus to escape” and mutate.
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