Experts are becoming increasingly concerned that at least some variants of the coronavirus will be an additional challenge to limit the spread covid-19 by vaccination. Recent data announced over the weekend suggests that a variant found for the first time in South Africa may escape the detection of antibodies in some people who have been infected with older versions of the virus. Although these variants are very unlikely to completely evade the immunity offered by the vaccine, scientists are preparing for the possibility of vaccines being adjusted to better suit the newer strains circulating in the population.
In mid-December, scientists from the UK and South Africa has announced the emergence of new strains of coronavirus that contained worrying genetic variation. Although the variants have shared some mutations, they are thought to have evolved independent. Both the British version – known as 20I / 501Y.V1 or B.1.1.7 – and the South African version – called 20H / 501Y.V2 or B.1.351 – were quickly determined to be more transmissible than ordinary strains. before in Thosand communities.
Viruses move all the time, but what made B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and other similar variants, so worrying for scientists is their collection of multiple mutations related to Spike protein, an essential part of the virus that helps it break into cells to do more of itself. Proper mutations in the right places can change the relationship between a virus and its host, including its ability to infect people whose immune systems already have he was trained to recognize the virus, either by natural infection or by vaccination. And this is a concern that is starting to seem more real, especially for B.1.351.
On Monday, the National Institute for Communicable diseases (NICD) – South African Public Health Agency – announced the results early work studying B.1.351 and immunity. They exposed the blood sample variant from 44 covid-19 survivors, looking to see if the virus will survive against neutralizing antibodies created against a previous infection.
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“Blood samples from half of the people tested showed that all neutralization activity was lost”, NICD wrote on its website. “This suggests that they may no longer be protected from re-infection.”
In more than 90% of the samples, there was also at least a reduction in the neutralizing capacity displayed by the antibodies. This is a more difficult finding to assess, but it might suggest that reduced immunity should be expected. infected people early in pandemics which are then exposed to B.1.351.
These discoveries are still preliminary and are based on a small sample size. And as I said often, immunity is complicated. Antibodies are a crucial aspect of our immune system, but they are not the only part. T cells and B cells are also key, and it would take a long time for any variant to bypass all these defenses at once. This could mean that B.1.351 and similar variants can cause reinfections, but these reinfections could be on average lighter than the first time. For people already vaccinated against coronavirus, these data suggest that B.1.351 may be able to cause disease more often than previous variants. But again, it would probably cause fewer diseases (and fewer serious diseases) on average in vaccinated people than in unprotected ones. Not all options are the sameand their effects on immunity and transmission will largely depend on how widespread the immune system is. alternative gets in the community.
All this said, the new the data from South Africa is really worrying. The variants in Great Britain and South Africa are already spread in several countries, and experts are afraid soon become predominant in these places. On weekends, scientists with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention freed a paper that predicted that variant B.1.1.7 would probably become the dominant strain in the US by March.
Currently, the same CDC model predicts that higher levels of vaccination over time will greatly reduce the transmission of any variants, including B.1.1.7 – an opinion widely held by many outside scientists. Even a vaccine that loses some effectiveness due to these variants is likely to have a strong impact on disease reduction and transmission, as well as vaccines for the rapid movement of viral diseases such as influenza.
But these new findings, which are expected to be fully presented by the South African government in a few weeks, indicate that we need to watch the virus closely as it continues to evolve. Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech – the companies behind the first two vaccines to reach the American public – have established that their vaccines should be effective against the variants found so far, but they they also said their vaccines could be modified to better suit the newer ones STRAINS if necessary. Data from the study of other human coronaviruses also have suggested that covid-19 vaccines will need to be updated regularly to keep up with the change in the virus.
More than anything, these developments should highlight why it is more important than ever to reduce our risk of catching and transmitting covid-19. No matter how many mutations the coronavirus gets, it has not stopped relying on humans to continue to spread. Wearing masks and avoiding close and prolonged contact inside with large groups of people will further help bring a faster the end of the pandemic.