Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said Johnson & Johnson and Novavax Covid-19 vaccines will continue to be essential tools against new emerging variants of the virus – even though companies said their shots could be less powerful against a strain found in South Africa.
On 28 January, Novavax stated that its vaccine was almost 90% effective in protecting against Covid-19 in the third phase study in the UK, but had a deactivated response in South Africa with an effective rate of only 49.4% of 44 cases. in the country. A day later, J&J said its vaccine was 66% effective overall, but only 57% effective in South Africa, where strain B.1.351 is spreading rapidly.
Gates, whose foundation has donated millions for the coronavirus vaccine and treatment research, told CNBC that the two vaccines, which have not yet been licensed for use in the United States, still retain “much capacity against” the variants.
People understand that “there is a low effectiveness, although Novavax and Johnson & Johnson still have a great capacity against these variants,” he told Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC in an interview with Squawk Box on Thursday.
Gates wondered if a third dose of the vaccine would be enough to protect against the new variants.
“There is a rich dialogue between our foundation, Dr. [Anthony] Jaws and the other government people right now about this variant of strategy, “said Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and co-founder of Microsoft.
Gates’ comments come as US officials push Americans to get vaccinated as soon as possible before potentially new and even more dangerous variants of the virus appear.
As of Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified 1,277 cases of variant B.1.1.7 first identified in the UK. The agency identified 19 cases of B.1.351 strain in South Africa, as well as three cases of P .1, a variant first identified in Brazil.
The United States must rapidly roll out Covid-19 vaccines and step up genetic sequencing of its variants before the virus can move again and worsen the pandemic, the CDC chief said in a paper released Wednesday.
Variant B.1.1.7 has been shown to be highly transmissible, and “preliminary data suggest the possibility of increasing the severity of the disease with infection,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky wrote in a research opinion published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA.
Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser and the country’s leading infectious disease expert, has repeatedly said in recent weeks that viruses cannot move if they do not have hosts to infect and are unable to replicate.
Fauci also recently promoted the J&J vaccine, saying that although it appeared to be less effective than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, it was still able to keep people out of the hospital and prevent them from becoming seriously ill.
“The most important thing, more important than preventing someone from suffering from pain and sore throat, is to prevent people from” getting seriously ill, “said the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in a call with reporters from 29 January “This will alleviate so much stress, suffering and human death in this epidemic.
Gates was also confident that nations and drug manufacturers will be able to grow production so that there are enough doses to immunize the world. He added that the thought that getting fires in developing countries would be “the only way to end the pandemic”.