NEW YORK (CU)_A new study has found early evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by American pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, in collaboration with German biotechnology company, BioNTech, might be effective against the two new COVID-19 strains found in South Africa and the UK.
In the recent days, several experts warned against the possibility of these new strains being resistant to COVID-19 vaccines, owing to the “substantial changes in the structure of the protein”.
However, in a research conducted by Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch, scientists have found that antibodies from people who had received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine showed “no reduction in neutralization activity” against the new variants which carry the mutation, known as N501Y.
For the study, researchers tested the virus with the N501Y mutation, which they created in the lab, against blood from 20 people who had received two doses of the vaccine as part of a clinical trial.
The N501Y mutation, which is located in the coronavirus’ spike protein, appears to help the virus attach to human cells, which partly explains why these new variants appear to be more transmissible.
However, the research posted online on Thursday (Jan 7), does not test the full array of this mutation, nor has it been peer-reviewed.
Deborah Dunn-Walters, chair of the British Society for Immunology’s taskforce on Covid-19 and immunology, warned that a limitation of this study is that the mutation was tested in isolation. Instead, the mutations that may have a compound effect “should be tested together,” she added.
Experts also warn that if the new strains are more transmissible or less susceptible to a vaccine, it could also require countries to vaccinate a higher proportion of their populations, thereby raising the bar for achieving herd immunity.
In a statement issued last month, Pfizer said it had performed similar tests on multiple mutant strains and have found consistent coverage of all the strains tested to date. Nevertheless, its German collaborator stressed that “further data are needed” to track the how effective the vaccine is at preventing disease caused by new variants.
