A photo taken on January 15, 2021 shows a pharmacist holding a bottle of undiluted Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for Covid-19 in gloved hands, stored at -70 ° in a super freezer at Le Mans hospital, northwest France as the country has a vaccination campaign to fight the spread of the new coronavirus.
Jean-Francois Monier | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – The coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech is likely to be equally effective against a highly transmissible mutant strain of the virus that was first discovered in the UK, according to a study by the two companies.
The variant, known as B.1.1.7., Is estimated to have first appeared in the UK in September 2020. It has an exceptionally high number of mutations and is associated with more efficient and faster transmission.
The variant’s characteristics have raised concerns about the effectiveness of Covid vaccines against it.
However, research published on the bioRxiv prepress server showed “no biologically significant difference in neutralization activity” between the laboratory tests in B.1.1.7 and the original coronavirus strain.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that all mutations associated with the newly discovered variant were neutralized by antibodies in the blood of 16 participants who had previously received the vaccine.
Half of the participants were between 18 and 55 years old and the other half were between 56 and 85 years old.
The study authors cautioned that the rapid spread of Covid variants worldwide required “continuous monitoring of the importance of changes to the protection maintained by currently authorized vaccines”.
It is the first such document to be completed by a major vaccine manufacturer at Covid, while other pharmaceutical companies are struggling to conduct tests on the effectiveness of their respective vaccines.
Moderna and AstraZeneca, which developed a Covid vaccine in partnership with the University of Oxford, said earlier that they expect their vaccines to be effective against B.1.1.7.
Spread of the virus
Earlier this month, Dr. Ugur Sahin, co-founder and CEO of BioNTech, told CNBC that the German pharmaceutical company was confident that its vaccine would develop an immune response against B.1.1.7.
Sahin said he believes the vaccine must also prove effective against a variant discovered in South Africa – another highly transmissible variant that has raised concerns among public health experts.
Their comments were made shortly after initial tests showed that the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech appeared to be effective against a key mutation in the most infectious variants of the virus discovered in the UK and South Africa. Now, scientists from the two companies have published research indicating that the vaccine is likely to be effective against all mutations associated with B.1.1.7.
In recent weeks, optimism about the mass launch of Covid vaccines worldwide has been tempered by an increase in the spread rate of the virus.
To date, more than 96.2 million people have contracted the coronavirus, with 2.05 million deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.