South African variant unlikely to ‘completely cancel’ COVID vaccines, scientist says

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

British scientists expressed concern on Monday that COVID-19 vaccines may not be able to protect against the variant identified by South African scientists and which has spread internationally.

Richard Lessells, an infectious disease expert at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform, who was pivotal in identifying the variant known as 501Y.V2, said said he understood the comments were not based on new data but on shared data. information.

“They are expressing the same concerns that we expressed when we first released this information that we were concerned about the pattern of the mutations,” Lessells said Tuesday.

South African researchers are studying the effects of mutations in the variant, particularly whether the natural immunity against exposure to old versions of the virus offers protection against reinfection by the new variant.

Preliminary results from those studies could 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 spike protein that the virus uses to infect human cells.

One of them is at a site considered important for neutralizing antibodies and is not in another coronavirus variant discovered in Britain, Lessells said.

“The reason we’ve been a bit cautious in pointing out the concern about (the effectiveness of) vaccines is that for many vaccines, they are thought to induce a fairly broad immune response,” he said.

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

“This is why we believe that while these mutations may have some effect, it is very unlikely that they completely negate the effect of the vaccines,” Lessells said.

The South African Department of Health acknowledged Reuters’ questions but did not give an immediate response. The country has recorded more than 1.1 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 30,000 deaths, the most on the African continent.

Public Health England said there was no evidence to suggest the COVID-19 vaccines would 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 against the British variant.