A photograph taken on January 15, 2021 shows a pharmacist holding with his gloved hands a bottle of the undiluted Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for Covid-19, stored at -70 ° in a freezer at Le Mans Hospital, in northwestern France, as countries conduct a vaccination campaign to combat the spread of the new coronavirus.
Jean-Francois Monier | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – The coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech is likely to be just as effective against a highly transmissible mutant strain of the virus that was first discovered in the UK, according to a study by the two companies.
It was estimated that the variant, known as B.1.1.7, first appeared in the UK in September 2020. It has an unusually high number of mutations and is associated with more efficient and faster transmission.
The characteristics of the variant had raised concerns about the effectiveness of vaccines against Covid.
However, the research published on the bioRxiv prepress server showed “no biologically significant difference in neutralization activity” between the laboratory tests of B.1.1.7 and the original coronavirus strain.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that all mutations associated with the newly discovered variant were neutralized by antibodies in the blood of 16 participants who had previously been given the vaccine.
Half of the participants were between 18 and 55 years old and the other half were between 56 and 85 years old.
The study’s authors warned that the rapid spread of Covid variants worldwide required “continuous monitoring of the importance of changes to maintain the protection of currently authorized vaccines.”
It is the first such document to be completed by a major vaccine manufacturer Covid, as other pharmaceutical companies are engaged in testing the effectiveness of their own respective inoculations.
Moderna and AstraZeneca, which have developed a Covid vaccine in collaboration with Oxford University, have previously said they expect their vaccines to be effective against B.1.1.7.
Virus spread
Earlier this month, Dr. Ugur Sahin, co-founder and CEO of BioNTech, told CNBC that the German pharmaceutical company was confident its vaccine would develop an immune response against B.1.1.7.
Sahin said he believed the vaccine should also be effective against a variant discovered in South Africa, another highly transmissible variant that has raised concern among public health experts.
His comments came shortly after initial tests had shown that Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine appeared to be effective against a key mutation in the most infectious variants of the virus discovered in the UK and South Africa. Now, scientists from both companies have published research indicating that the vaccine is likely to be effective against all mutations associated with B.1.1.7.
In recent weeks, optimism about the mass deployment of Covid vaccines around the world has been dampened by the rate of virus spread.
To date, more than 96.2 million people have contracted the coronavirus, with 2.05 million dead, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.