Moderna has announced that its vaccine against the South African variant of COVID-19 is ready for testing

The American laboratory Moderna reported on Wednesday that Its new vaccine developed to fight the South African variant of COVID-19 has been sent to the National Institutes of Health in the United States for testing.

“We are eagerly awaiting the start of the phase 1 clinical trial”, said the CEO of the biotechnology company, Stéphane Bancel.

“As we seek to defeat COVID-19, we must be vigilant and proactive in the emergence of new variants of SARS-CoV-2. Taking advantage of the flexibility of our mRNA platform, we are making rapid progress in testing vaccine updates that address emerging variants of the virus. “Bancel added.

In a study published last week, Moderna has shown that the blood of people who have received the current vaccine contains neutralizing antibodies against the main variants of COVID-19. But only a sixth of the antibodies protected against the B.1.351 variant of the virus, originating in South Africa and target of their new vaccine.

It is not clear whether this low level of antibodies is sufficient to protect people against severe or symptomatic cases of COVID-19 from this new variant.

That’s why “As a precaution,” the company said in a press release on Wednesday, it has started working on two possible strategies against the variant.– Give people a booster dose of the parent vaccine to increase antibody levels and develop two variant-specific vaccines. which could be provided in place of the original.

In addition, the company specifies that it is committed to making as many updates of its vaccine as necessary “until the pandemic is under control”.

Moderna, which makes one of two vaccines approved by the FDA in the United States, said has produced enough of its specific vaccine against the South African variant, called mRNA-1273,351, to begin testing it in humans.

Any change in the manufacture of vaccines, including those made to fight against new variants of the virus, must be approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration, It will not be the same authorization process they had for their original injections.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will collaborate with clinical studies to see if mRNA-1273.351 can increase immunity against the variant.. In its announcement on Wednesday, the company said it had already shipped enough doses of this specific vaccine variant needed for testing.

Other COVID-19 vaccine companies, such as Pfizer-BioNTech, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca-Oxford University, They also said they are working on new versions of their vaccines or boosters to increase their protection.

The South African strain is considered one of the most dangerous variants of covid-19 because it manages to bypass some of the blockages that antibodies establish against older versions of the virus.

That implies that people infected with previous variants are more likely to relapse and research has shown that the protection of the first generation of vaccines is less, although most are still effective.

Moderna also announced that it will increase its global manufacturing capacity to produce 1.4 billion doses of its vaccine in 2022.

Plus he said he will increase manufacturing plan for 2021 from 600 million doses to 700 million. Moderna has shipped 60 million doses so far, 55 million to the United States.

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