The South African variant is likely to completely deny COVID vaccines, according to the scientist

JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 5 (Reuters) – A variant of the coronavirus first detected in South Africa is unlikely to completely deny the immunizing effects of vaccines, a researcher studying it told Reuters.

British scientists on Monday expressed concern that COVID-19 vaccines could not be protected against the variant identified by South African genomics scientists and that it has spread internationally.

Richard Lessells, an infectious disease expert from the KwaZulu-Natal research innovation and sequencing platform, who played a central role in identifying the variant known as 501Y.V2, said he understood that the comments did not they were based on no new data but on shared data. information.

“They’re expressing the same concerns we expressed when we first published this information, that the mutation pattern worried us,” Lessells said Tuesday.

South African researchers are studying the effects of mutations on the variant, including whether natural immunity from exposure to earlier variants provides protection against reinfection by the new variant.

Preliminary results from those studies may be ready by the end of this week, Lessells said.

Scientists have identified more than 20 mutations in the 501Y.V2 variant, including several in the ear protein that the virus uses to infect human cells.

One of them is in a place that is thought to be important for neutralizing antibodies and is not found in another variant of the coronavirus discovered in Britain, Lessells said.

“Why we have been a little cautious in recording the concern about (the effectiveness) of vaccines is that for many of the vaccines they are thought to induce a fairly broad immune response,” he said.

This broad response could target different parts of the ear protein, not just one, he added.

“That’s why we think that while these mutations may have some effect, it’s very unlikely that they will completely nullify the effect of vaccines,” Lessells said.

South Africa’s health ministry acknowledged Reuters’ questions, but did not give an immediate answer. The country has reported more than 1.1 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 30,000 deaths, most from the African continent.

Public Health England has said there is no evidence to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines do not protect against mutated coronavirus variants.

BioNTech chief executive Ugur Sahin said in an interview last week that his company’s vaccine, which uses messenger RNA to instruct the human immune system to fight the virus, should be able to protect itself from the British variant. . (Report of Alexander Winning Edition by Joe Bavier and Alexander Smith)