| 30/01/2021 – 18:49 (GMT-4)
The recently identified coronavirus variant in South Africa reduces the protective capacity of some available vaccines against the disease by up to 50 percent, U.S. experts have noted.
This information comes from a group of clinical trials of two vaccines, Novavax and Johnson & Johnson, The results indicate that their effectiveness, in terms of disease protection capacity, is considerably reduced compared to the South African variant of COVID-19.
The clinical trial in South Africa, where the new variant is widespread, yielded disastrous results, according to preliminary data released by the two companies.
Novavax reported that its vaccine has an overall 50 percent effectiveness in preventing COVID-19 among South Africans; while in the UK it was up 89.3 per cent effective.
For its part, J&J claimed that a single dose of its coronavirus vaccine was 72 percent effective in the US. but in the African country the effectiveness was just 57 per cent.
There the new variant, known as B 1,351, accounted for 95 percent of the coronavirus cases reported in the trial.
“It is clear that mutations produce a decreasing effect on vaccine efficacy,” explained Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“We see that we will have problems,” said the expert, for whom the decline in efficacy rates underscores the need to accelerate vaccination efforts before new mutations emerge that could be even more dangerous.
“The best way to prevent a virus from continuing to evolve is to prevent it from replicating, and this is achieved vaccinating people as quickly as possible“He warned.
For his part, Harvard University Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center researcher Dan Barouch said “now it’s a different pandemic.”
Barouch, who helped develop the J&J vaccine, said there is now a wide variety of new variants circulating around the world, including Brazil, South Africa and even the United States, which are substantially resistant to vaccine-induced antibodies.
On Pfizer, one of the most developed vaccines against COVID-19, the company’s adviser, Albert Bourla, stated that there is “a high possibility” that the emerging variants will also end up making it ineffective.
“This is not yet the case (…), but I think it is very likely that one day this will happen,” Bourla said at the World Economic Forum, faced with doubts about whether something similar was happening with Pfizer.
the company ModernInstead, he had reported last Monday that his vaccine was effective against the new coronavirus variants found.
He also said he plans to begin clinical trials of a new enhanced version of his vaccine against the South African variant of COVID-19, because it has been shown to produce a decreased antibody reaction in the authorized version of Moderna, yet that this result is not yet verifiable.