Although there is always concern that a vaccine will not work if a virus moves significantly, Walter Reed scientists still expect the vaccine to be effective against this new variant, said Dr. Nelson Michael, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at Walter Reed Army Research Institute.
“Obviously, this mutation is not a threat, but you never know. We still have to be diligent and keep looking,” Michael said.
They do a computerized analysis as a first step.
“Computer analysis will allow us to measure how careful we should be,” Michael said. “Other teams around the world are doing this analysis.”
If computer analysis shows that there is a concern, then laboratory and animal studies should be performed to determine more definitively whether the vaccine will work on this variant.
At a press conference on Saturday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced new holiday blockades in parts of England that saw the new mutation spread.
“There is no evidence to suggest that the vaccine will be less effective against the new variant. Our experts will continue to work to improve our understanding as quickly as we can,” Johnson said.
The Chief Scientific Adviser to the United Kingdom agreed.
“Our current working assumption on the part of all scientists is that the response to the vaccine should be appropriate for this virus,” Dr. Patrick Vallance told the news conference.
The US Food and Drug Administration has authorized two vaccines, one by Pfizer and the other by Moderna. Both work by creating a genetic plan for the peaks that appear on the surface of the new coronavirus. The immune system “sees” the peaks and learns how to launch an attack against it.
As with other new variants or strains of Covid-19, it has a genetic footprint that makes it easy to track and happens to be one that is now common. This does not mean that the mutation has made it easier to spread, nor does it necessarily mean that this variation is more dangerous.
Several experts in the genetics and epidemiology of viruses find that it could only be a “lucky” strain that has been amplified due to a spreading event; it could be the mutation that somehow makes it spread more easily without causing more serious illness; or it could just be accidental.
Vaccines are still useful because viruses move constantly, but usually not in ways that would make a vaccine useless, said Dr. William Schaffner, an advisor to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for vaccines.
“Even with mutations, the virus remains essentially the same,” Schaffner said. “It’s like being with a person. I can change my brown coat for a gray coat, but I’m still Bill Schaffner. I’ve changed something, but I’m still the same person.”
CNN’s Sam Romano contributed to this story.