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Urgent investigations are currently underway to determine whether these expert fears are justified.
If the variant known as 501.V2 will truly be resistant to currently available vaccines, they should be adjusted. This would be enough to adjust the RNA sequences used in current vaccines, which, according to vaccine developers, would take around six weeks.
The developers of the vaccine are Ugur Sahin, founder of BioNTech, and John Bell, professor at the University of Oxford. Its laboratories are currently conducting studies on the efficacy of vaccines against the pre-South African 501.V2 variant and against the British variant B.1.1.7.
The experiments are called neutralization samples. During these, the viruses are incubated with antibodies and human cells to check that the antibodies can protect against infection.
The tests are being done on the blood of people who have already been vaccinated and on the blood of people who have developed COVID-19 naturally, said Dr. Richard Lessells, a communicable disease expert who works on genetic research for the South African variant.
It’s basically no surprise that variants of the virus like 501.V2 and B.1.1.7 have emerged – all viruses can mutate by making their own copies, and the new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 is not exclusive.
But while these two recently discovered virus variants are characterized by several similar mutations, 501.V2 also has a number of additional mutations of concern to researchers, said Simon Clarke, associate professor of cell microbiology at the University of Reading.
More specifically, the South African variant of the virus contains more mutations in the viral spike protein itself, which binds to the ACE2 receptor on the surface of the human cell and allows viral genetic material to invade the interior of the human cell.
Most of the vaccines available today target this conifer protein, which teaches the human immune system to recognize and attack this protein derivative. But if too many mutations build up in the needle protein, it will become unrecognizable to the immune system, allowing the virus to avoid a strong and rapid immune response.
Neutralization samples should show fairly quickly whether the medical experts’ concerns are justified or not. Meanwhile, the British Center for Public Health says there is currently no evidence to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines do not protect against the B.1.1.7 and 501.V2 strains.
It is somewhat reassuring that some experts told The New York Times that it would take several years to acquire enough mutations for the virus to be able to outwit vaccines.
“It will be a process that will take several years to accumulate various mutations in the virus,” Jesse Bloom, an expert in evolutionary biology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, told the US publication. According to him, it will not be like a switch in binary mode, causing the virus to suddenly gain resistance to new variants.
In other words, current vaccines will not stop working instantly, but their effectiveness may decrease over time.
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