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The Oxford / AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine does not appear to offer protection against mild and moderate illnesses caused by the viral variant first identified in South Africa, according to a study due to be released on Monday.
While none of the more than 2,000 patients in the study died or were hospitalized, the results could complicate the race to roll out vaccines as new strains emerge.
In human trials and tests on the blood of vaccinated people, jab has shown significantly reduced efficacy against the 501Y.V2 viral variant, which is dominant in South Africa, according to the randomized double-blind study seen by the Financial Times.
“A two-dose regimen of [the vaccine] did not show mild to moderate protection against Covid-19 due to [the South African variant]The study indicates, adding that the effectiveness against severe Covid-19, hospitalizations and deaths has not yet been determined.
The so-called Kent variant – which the University of Oxford said on Friday was just as susceptible to the vaccine as older variants of the virus – has now acquired the E484K mutation, which is present in the variants fueling the outbreaks of Covid-19 in Brazil and South Africa. .
There are caveats to the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, as the sample sizes were relatively small. The study, conducted by the South African University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Oxford, recruited 2,026 HIV negative people, with a median age of 31. Half of the group received at least one dose of placebo, and the other half received at least one dose of vaccine.
Tulio de Oliveira, who heads the genomic surveillance network in South Africa, told the Financial Times the results were a “wake-up call to control the virus and increase the response to Covid-19 around the world.”
Health officials around the world are hoping vaccines will reduce or completely eliminate the burden of hospitalization, which would help ease lockdowns.
While important, it is relatively less urgent to avoid a symptomatic, but milder infection that does not progress to hospitalization.
Any decline in the efficacy of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine would be particularly crucial for developing countries, as partners produce billions of doses at nonprofit during the pandemic.
The vaccine still appears to be fully effective in preventing hospitalization and death from other variants of the coronavirus, data from other studies show.
AstraZeneca declined to comment and referred questions to Oxford. Oxford declined to comment on the study’s results, saying only that it was working with partners around the world, including South Africa, to assess the effects of new variants on the first generation of its Covid vaccine.
“Oxford is working with AstraZeneca to optimize the pipeline required for a stress change should it become necessary,” the university said. “This is the same problem that all vaccine developers face, and we will continue to monitor the emergence of new variants that arise in anticipation of a future strain change.”
The University of the Witwatersrand did not respond to requests for comment. The South African Department of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While all Covid-19 vaccines so far have largely resisted the B.1.1.7 variant that has emerged in the UK, the strain originating in South Africa is of more concern. Johnson & Johnson and Novavax both said their vaccines were less effective against the strain in clinical trials in South Africa. In trials, both vaccines offered complete protection against serious illness and death related to Covid-19.
Moderna said he would test a booster and a reformulated vaccine to target the South African variant, after studies showed his vaccine to be significantly less effective.
BioNTech / Pfizer said their vaccine was slightly less effective in a lab study using a pseudovirus with certain mutations in the 501Y.V2 variant, but have not released results from testing against the variant itself.
The 501Y.V2 variant, dominant in South Africa, was recently discovered in countries around the world, including the United States and the United Kingdom.
South Africa took delivery of 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine last week, the first Covid-19 vaccines to arrive in the country, as part of an order of 1.5 million doses from the institute Indian serum.
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