BERLIN – European authorities are going to offer a coronavirus vaccine to every adult in an Austrian district hit by an outbreak of infections to determine the effectiveness of inoculation against the variant first found in South Africa.
Starting next week, all people aged 16 and over who live in the Schwaz district, near the Austrian city of Innsbruck, will be eligible for free vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, as part of the unique effort to learn more about combating variant.
The study in Austria is part of a much broader global effort to answer a crucial question as the virus mutates and new variants emerge: Do vaccinations made last year work against the latest mutations? Otherwise, scientists will have to continue to develop new versions of the inoculations.
Laboratory studies have shown that some vaccines that work well against previous variants are less effective – although they still offer significant protection – against the variant known as B.1.351, which was first found in South Africa in December and became the dominant one there. .
Real testing of these findings is still needed, and some combinations of variants and vaccines have not yet been tested, even in laboratory settings.
Authorities in the district of Schwaz, in the state of Tirol, on Thursday appealed to residents to apply for vaccines by March 8, to allow sufficient doses to be ordered and delivered for the study. More than 20,000 residents, about a third of all eligible, registered within the first 24 hours, officials said.
Earlier this week, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, agreed to allocate 100,000 extra doses of the vaccine to Austria, in exchange for allowing a multinational team of scientists to collect data on mass vaccination in Tyrol. The region saw one of the worst outbreaks of the variant in Europe and Austria’s Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, had been lobbying the European Union for extra doses to try to prevent its spread.
“Our goal is to be able to massively halt, if not eradicate, the South African variant,” said Günther Platter, governor of Tyrol, announcing the project on Wednesday. “We want to protect people from this variant.”
The pilot program in Austria is the first such inoculation unit targeting a specific region within the European Union, where vaccine launch has lagged behind among member states, far behind some other wealthy nations. About 6% of the bloc’s population received at least one shot, compared with 16% in the United States, 31% in Britain and 55% in Israel.
“From a scientific point of view, it is an incredibly important study where we can learn a lot,” said Dr. Herwig Kollaritsch, a member of the Austrian immunization commission, in an interview with public broadcaster ORF.
“It will also be beneficial for Pfizer, which is legitimate because these vaccines have not been on the market for a long time and each day we gain more knowledge that helps us understand how to use them in the best way,” said Dr. Kollaritsch.
But the success of the project depends on everyone’s willingness to participate. Authorities hope to begin administering shots on March 11.
What you need to know about the vaccine launch
Dr. Kollaritsch said it would take about a month for the full effect of the vaccine to take effect. Teams of scientists from Austria and abroad will be monitoring how the vaccine prevents infection with the variant, a scenario that has not yet been clinically tested, he said.
Since last February, thousands of police and border patrol officers have been protecting the state’s border, ensuring that anyone who leaves, even to travel to other regions of Austria, can produce a test that shows they are not infected. Communities received test kits to encourage widespread testing as part of screening efforts to prevent the spread of the virus.
The state saw the number of infections with variant B.1.351 drop from 200 a day in early February to 88 on Wednesday, as the state’s overall infection rate also continued to decline.
Suspicious of the threat posed by the variant, the German government closed its border with Tyrol last month, interrupting international travel on one of Europe’s most important north-south arteries, restricting traffic and angering authorities in Brussels.
The region was one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus in Austria. The first cases of infection in the country were detected in the state capital, Innsbruck, in February 2020. The following month, a very widespread event was tracked to the ski resort town of Ischgl, where authorities later determined that many Europeans contracted the viruses during the holidays. , and then took it home with them.
Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting from Hanover, Germany