TPfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine appears to work just as well against a rapidly spreading variant of coronavirus first identified in the UK as it did against previous forms of the pathogen, the companies reported in a study on Wednesday.
The article by the company’s scientists, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, is a welcome sign that existing vaccines do not appear to be weakened by the variant in question, dubbed B.1.1.7. Scientists had previously tested the Pfizer vaccine against one of the major mutations in the variant and found that the neutralizing power of immunization was not affected.
Scientists are also testing vaccines against other worrying variants, which contain different mutations that, in laboratory experiments, have shown that they can, to some extent, help the virus escape existing antibodies that recognize and target the virus. These mutations appear in variants seen for the first time in South Africa and Brazil, which also appear to be more transmissible than previous iterations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Variants in South Africa and Brazil have raised concerns that people who have recovered from Covid-19 and who have antibodies to the virus can more easily re-infect, although more studies – including whether there is any impact on vaccine functioning – are underway. in progress.
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In the new study, the researchers designed the so-called pseudoviruses (they are more practical to work in laboratory experiments than real specimens of dangerous viruses like SARS-2) to have the complete set of mutations like B.1.1.7. Then they tested the blood collected from 16 people who received the vaccine against the variant and found that it could neutralize the variant as well as an earlier form of the virus. “This data … makes it unlikely that the B.1.1.7 strain will escape” vaccine protection, the researchers wrote.
Experts say it is possible that some of the new variants will not respond as well to existing vaccines as other forms of the virus. But they emphasize that vaccines generate incredibly robust immune responses, so they can withstand some drop in potency without losing their ability to protect people from Covid-19.
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“The vaccine’s effectiveness is so good and so high that we have a little protection,” said Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Biden government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Tuesday in an interview with the editor of JAMA.
Eventually, the virus is expected to catch mutations significant enough that vaccine manufacturers need to update their immunizations, a process that, experts say, would likely take weeks to months, not years.