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A genomics team led by the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) found that people who have been infected with this variant have some level of protection against reinfection.
This undated brochure image, courtesy of the British Health Protection Agency, shows the coronavirus seen under an electron microscope. Image: AFP.
CAPE TOWN – Scientists have emphasized that a recent discovery about the new variant of the coronavirus that was first studied in South Africa shouldn’t make people complacent.
A genomics team led by the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) found that people who have been infected with this variant have some level of protection against reinfection.
The team, in collaboration with the Genomic Surveillance Network in South Africa, found that the coronavirus variant provides people with protection to some extent from current and former circulating variants.
The head of the department of medical microbiology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Professor Koleka Mlisana, said that more research was being carried out: “This is limited information. We do not yet have information on other variants in other countries. “
READ MORE: Those who get the protected 501Y.V2 variant from other variants: SA scientists
National Institute of Communicable Diseases professor Penny Moore said people should still adhere to non-pharmaceutical interventions aimed at keeping the coronavirus at bay.
“We strongly recommend that people continue to use protection as people who have not been infected.”
NOTE: People infected with the 501Y.V2 variant are protected from past and current variants
Scientists say it was not yet clear how long antibodies last in people who have been infected, or how many antibodies are needed to protect people from reinfection.
FUTURE VACCINES
Future development of a vaccine will benefit from the discovery that the second variant of the coronavirus provides some level of immunity.
The chairman of the government’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19, Professor Salim Adbool Karim, said that there is a good prospect of success for future vaccines, if they are manufactured based on the 501Y.V2 variant.
“If a vaccine is based on the capabilities of this new variant strain, we refer to it as epitomes. If we build the next version of the vaccine based on that, we can hope that there is a good chance that the vaccine will elicit good immune responses. “
Karim said that the vaccine had already been produced by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Moderna.
“It is already entering human studies and Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZaneca are doing it in a similar way. Everyone is using 501Y.V2 as a variant that they want to test and guide. “
On other variants that are possibly emerging, Professor Alex Sigal of the Africa Health Research Institute said that another scientist involved in the research, Sandile Cele, was trying to predict what the virus’s next move will be.
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