How the different Covid vaccines will handle the new variants of the virus

New, more contagious variants of the coronavirus are being investigated in the United States, raising the question of whether the Covid vaccines currently in use will provide protection against mutations.

Multiple more contagious variants are emerging around the world, UK, South Africa and Brazil. In the United States, variants of New York and California have been identified.

So far, studies suggest that currently used vaccines can recognize emerging variants – but they don’t offer as much protection against these new strains. The South African variant, for example, reduced the protection of Pfizer-BioNTech’s antibodies by two-thirds, according to a February study. Moderna’s neutralizing antibodies were increased six-fold with the South African variant.

(There are several reasons why antibodies generated after receiving a vaccine may recognize a variant but not fight it as well. Antibodies protect you by attaching to each individual spike protein on the surface of the coronavirus, which prevents it infect your cell. If a variant produces multiple times as many viruses, the antibodies may not be able to attach to all of these virus fragments as precisely or efficiently.)

But boosters and new versions of vaccines that target the variants are already being explored.

The three vaccines that have been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson work in different ways and therefore have different approaches to handling the variants. Here is what we know:

Moderna is testing using a third dose of its existing vaccine, as well as using a booster injection that targets the South African variant. (He sent samples to the National Institutes of Health for clinical trials on February 24.)

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said the company “is committed to making as many updates to our vaccine as needed until the pandemic is under control,” in a February 24 press release. .

Moderna’s vaccine uses messenger RNA or “mRNA” technology to deliver genetic material to cells with instructions on how to make a non-infectious piece of the coronavirus spike protein. The immune system recognizes the copies of the spike protein and creates antibodies against it. If a fully vaccinated person is exposed to the virus in the future, the body can remember how to trigger an immune response and create antibodies that fight the virus.

The boosters for the new variants use the same technology as Moderna’s original Covid vaccine. Bancel said it was basically “copy and paste” the new mutations in the vaccine. Dr Kizzmekia Corbett, who led Moderna’s vaccine team, calls this approach “plug and play”.

It could take months for clinical data to be ready for review, and even longer for recalls to be approved, produced and ready for administration.

Moderna president Stephen Hoge told Scientific American that if variants start to dominate infections in the coming months, the company is ready to “figure out when and how we change.” Hoge did not comment on when the recall would be available.

Pfizer-BioNTech is also testing a third booster shot of its vaccine (which is an mRNA vaccine) on people who have been fully vaccinated as part of the Phase 1 study. Participants will receive their third dose six to 12 months. after being fully vaccinated, according to a statement.

In addition, the company is discussing a clinical trial for “a variant specific vaccine” which is a reconstructed version of its original vaccine using the South African strain, according to a statement.

“We believe our vaccine is highly active against all strains,” Pfizer chief scientist Mikael Dolsten said in an interview on February 25. Going forward, it is “a reasonable possibility” that people will need to receive regular reminders, Dolsten said. Or, companies may have to change strains every few years to adapt, he said.

Like Moderna, Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine is quite adaptable.

“The flexibility of our proprietary mRNA vaccine platform allows us to technically develop booster vaccines within weeks, if needed,” Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech, said in a statement.

“This regulatory pathway is already established for other infectious diseases like influenza. We are taking these steps to ensure long-term immunity against the virus and its variants.”

The most recent vaccine to obtain emergency use clearance from the Food and Drug Administration had a 72% effectiveness rate in preventing moderate disease in the U.S. But in South Africa, where a highly contagious mutation of the virus is the main variant, the efficacy was 64% effective in preventing moderate to severe or critical Covid, according to FDA data. In Brazil, the vaccine was 66% effective.

(Experts say it should be noted that the Johnson & Johnson trials took place when the new variants had already become the dominant strains in South Africa and Brazil, while the Moderna and Pfizer trials had take place before that happens.)

Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine uses an adenovirus, a virus that causes the common cold, as a messenger to deliver instructions to cells in the body.

Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky said the company is well positioned to tailor the vaccine to variants and is working on developing software that “will help deal with some of these new and emerging variants,” when an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box”. 1st of March. He didn’t explain how the software would work.

“We’re pretty confident, based on the clinical data we already have with our vaccine, that we’re going to see a very robust response, but we’re doing the exact same thing.” [as other companies working on variants]Said Gorsky.

Although Novavax’s two-dose Covid vaccine has yet to be approved in the United States, the company expects to get FDA approval by May.

Data from the UK January trial show the vaccine to be over 89% effective in protecting against Covid and 85.6% effective against the UK variant. But the Novavax vaccine was less than 50% effective on the South African strain.

Novavax is working on a third booster that could be tested in April, a company spokesperson told Scientific American.

Novavax is a two-dose ‘protein subunit vaccine’, which means it contains harmless pieces of the spike surface protein that directly trigger the immune system. So, essentially, scientists can add different strains to the existing vaccine as variants emerge.

Novavax CEO Stanley Erck told NPR that Covid vaccines can be changed “very easily,” in the same way that a flu vaccine is changed every year to accommodate the most important strains.

It might even end up being a “bivalent vaccine,” which is a vaccine that protects against multiple strains of a virus. “So we will use the original Wuhan strain and the South African strain [to tweak the vaccine] and test it in humans probably in the second quarter of this year, ”Erck told NPR.

To check your eligibility status, you can use the NBC News Vaccine Planning Tool.

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