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Massimo Ciccozzi (epidemiologist). “There is no evidence of a lower response to the vaccine”
by Barbara Fiammeri
Massimo Ciccozzi (epidemiologist). “There is no evidence of a decreased response to the vaccine”
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“We should not be afraid of mutations. It is through mutations that the adaptation of the virus to humans is favored. And this one coming from Great Britain is not the first. Massimo Ciccozzi, head of the Unit for Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Bio-Medical Campus of the University of Rome, uses a reassuring tone.
But isn’t there a risk that the vaccine will be less effective or will no longer be effective?
At the moment, a greater speed of infection is hypothesized, which is what worries the most, but there is no evidence of a lower response from the vaccine. We need to do molecular surveillance and wait for laboratory tests.
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However, it is precisely the mutations of the influenza virus that require different vaccines …
But this is a coronavirus and the mutations are much slower because the genome is much larger than that of the flu. Even if the mutation intervenes in the genome, in the Spike protein, it does not act on the surface and therefore does not affect the efficacy of the vaccine. After all, there have already been mutations. So much so that in Italy there are at least 13 variants of the virus that do not intervene in the lethality or contagiousness or in the efficacy of the vaccine.
But in this case there is a strong acceleration of contagion. Isn’t that an important sign?
It is not the first time that a mutation has intervened that accelerates the spread of Covid-19. In March, we hypothesized a greater transmission after the mutation, which intervened in the Spike protein, called DG614. In September, they published a study in Nature that showed that the strain caused by this mutation infected 13 times more than the others. Today, 98% of the sequences isolated in Italian patients have this mutation. The virus has changed, but not so much.
So shouldn’t the measures to combat it be changed?
Distance and masks one more year and in the meantime let’s get vaccinated: that’s how we will get out.
