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As new hope arrives in the form of coronavirus vaccinations, the pandemic has taken a turn and the public fears it will be for the worse.
Mutations of the deadly virus are appearing at a rapid rate around the world and the longer the vaccine rolls out, the more likely it is that a variant of COVID-19 could bypass current tests, treatments and vaccines.
Dr Pardis Sabeti, an evolutionary biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, called the vaccination battle a “race against time”, due to potential mutations that could make the virus more deadly.
A variant was first discovered in the UK and quickly spread to other parts of Europe. At the start of the year, the variant was reported in over 45 countries and is known to be more transmissible than the other known variants.
Brazil and South Africa have also crossed paths with new variants of the coronavirus.
Although the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are still expected to be effective against the latest virus variants, they offer less protection against the variant first detected in South Africa.
South Africa has announced a pause for the rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after a study found it provided “minimal protection” against mild to moderate cases caused by the dominant variant in its country, according to a BBC News report.
Members of the World Health Organization have issued warnings about jumping to conclusions about vaccine effectiveness.
Dr Katherine O’Brien, director of immunization at the WHO, said the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine would still have a significant impact on South Africa’s COVID variant.
“Comparing one piece of evidence to another really can’t be done without some kind of a level playing field.”
Mutations are expected in any virus. In March, shortly after the discovery of the coronavirus in China, a mutation called D614G appeared, making the virus more transmissible and it eventually became the most common variant in the world.
The future of the pandemic will depend on the ability of available vaccines to protect people against these variants.
Moderna and other companies will plan for further updates and changes to their vaccines to ensure protection against the more severe cases caused by new variants.
Virologist Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center called the updates a “good course of action.”
“It may not be necessary to have a fall vaccine update, but taking these steps now is the right course of action.”
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