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Is the PAR strain the most dangerous?
There is no evidence that the PAR strain causes a more severe course of COVID-19 in people infected with it, the BBC reports. As with the initial viral infection, the elderly or those with other serious illnesses are at higher risk. However, there is also a concern that available vaccines are not very effective in protecting against the PAR strain.
Some of the strain-specific changes are related to the needle protein. It is this part that is responsible for introducing the virus into human cells. Protein-based needle vaccines are also the reason why experts are concerned about these mutations. Another mutation, called E484K, can help the virus prevent the immune system response and affect the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines.
Do vaccines protect against PAR strains?
It is still difficult to say exactly whether vaccines protect and how effective, as more research is needed. On the other hand, mutations are highly unlikely to render the vaccine useless.
Researchers in the lab tested the effectiveness of a Pfizer-developed vaccine against COVID-19 against the N501Y and E484K mutations using blood samples taken from vaccinated people. This study showed that the vaccine protects against the pathogen, but not as effectively.
Moderna’s early results suggest that the vaccine he developed is still effective against the PAR variant, but the immune response may be weaker and shorter.
The new coronavirus vaccines, developed by Novavax and Janssen and not yet approved, although this may happen quite soon, appear to provide some protection against the PAR strain.
Preliminary studies show that a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca provides “limited” protection against the mild form of COVID-19 caused by PAR, but experts say the vaccine could also protect against a severe form of the disease. .
Even in the worst case, vaccines can be modified and tailored to a specific strain in a matter of weeks or months.
Reinfections
In late January, the Bloomberg news agency reported there were about 4,000 recurring COVID-19 infections in South Africa, said Barry Schoub, chairman of the country’s ministry’s advisory committee on vaccines.
“This is largely due to a strain of the virus discovered for the first time in the country,” Schoub said in a video seminar on Wednesday.
The mutation, known to scientists as B.1.351, was identified in the country last year and has become the dominant strain in society.
South Africa, where more than 1.5 million people have been infected by coronavirus. people and more than 52,000 have died, it is the country most affected by the pandemic on the continent.
February 8 A vaccine study in South Africa reported that two percent of people who had previously been infected with an older version of the virus were infected with the virus strain.
Recurring infections pose a public health problem, not just a personal one. Even in cases where reinfection causes no or minor symptoms, people can still transmit the virus. That’s why health officials are promoting vaccination as a longer-term solution and urging residents to wear masks, keep a physical distance, and wash their hands frequently.
A study in Israel shows a reduction in the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine
A study in Israel found that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is less effective against the PAR strain, reports timesofisrael.com.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University in the Black, who studied the vaccine, say that the vaccine produces many antibodies that effectively fight both the parental coronavirus and the British strain, but only moderately neutralize the PAR strain.
The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines were also less effective against British and PAR variant strains in the study.
The researchers took blood samples from 10 people who had relapsed COVID-19, five people who received the first dose of the vaccine, and 10 people who received the second dose. Blood samples were taken 21 days after the first dose or 10 days after the second.
They then tested the antibodies’ ability to protect against infection.
“The results of our study confirm the clinical efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine, but raise concerns about its efficacy against specific circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2,” the authors wrote. “In general, these results require close monitoring of the spread of strains and the development of new vaccines more suitable to neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 variants.”
The vaccine developed by AstraZeneca provides only 10% of the vaccine. protection against the PAR strain, the researchers said.
Researchers who have studied the effectiveness of a small-scale vaccine said the vaccine provides very little protection against a mild to moderate infection. Still, they expressed hope that, in theory at least, it should also provide some protection against a serious infection, reports theguardian.com.
These disappointing results came to light at a time when laboratory testing of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines showed that they could provide good protection against the PAR strain.
Researchers at the University of Texas took blood plasma containing antibodies from 20 people who had recently received two doses of Pfizer and BioNTech.
DelphiAccording to Reuters, in early March, after testing the vaccine in South Africa, data showed that the rapidly spreading strain of coronavirus could not only weaken the effect of the vaccine, but also ignore the natural immunity developed in people with pre-existing conditions. .
According to Reuters interviews with 18 experts who are closely following the pandemic or trying to mitigate its effects, a new approach is emerging among scientists. Most point to the breakthrough last year, when two were created about 95 percent. Effective vaccines against COVID-19 initially sparked hope that the virus was largely manageable, just as measles was before.
However, they say recent weeks’ data on new varieties in South Africa and Brazil suppress this optimism. Now, scientists have no doubt that SARS-CoV-2 will not only remain with us as an endemic virus and spread to society, but will also carry a heavy burden of morbidity and mortality in the years to come.
For this reason, scientists say that people will have to deal with the need to continue to take special measures during COVID-19 outbreaks, such as wearing masks regularly and avoiding crowded places. This will be especially true for people at high risk. Even after vaccination, “they will still want to wear a mask if the virus spreads,” Anthony Fauci, senior adviser to US President Joe Biden, said in an interview.
“A small spark of the virus is enough and it will spread another outbreak, that is the prediction,” said the expert on when life will return to normal.
Some researchers, including Chris Murray, a disease expert at the University of Washington, acknowledge that the situation could improve.
New vaccines developed in record time appear to help reduce the number of people hospitalized and deaths, even as new strains spread.
However, Ch. According to Murray, if South Africa or other similar strains continue to spread rapidly, the number of COVID-19 cases ending in hospital treatment or death could be four times higher than the number of flu cases next winter.
For most of the 2020s, most scientists were increasingly shocked by the virus. However, they assured that the coronavirus had not changed so dramatically as to become more contagious or more deadly. The big breakthrough came in November. Pfizer Inc. and its partner in Germany, BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc., have announced that clinical trials show that the vaccines they develop are about 95 percent. effective to protect against COVID-19. This effectiveness is far greater than that of any flu vaccine.
At least some of the researchers who spoke to Reuters said that even after learning the results, they did not expect the vaccines to kill the virus. Still, most researchers told Reuters that data in the scientific community had fueled hope that COVID-19 could be substantially destroyed if the world’s population were vaccinated quickly enough.
“Before Christmas, we were quite optimistic about all these vaccines. Not all of us expected to be able to develop vaccines with such high efficacy at the same time,” recalls Azra Ghani, Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology at Imperial College London. it turned out to be short-lived.
In late December, the UK announced a new strain of the virus that is spreading faster. It soon became the dominant strain of coronavirus in the country. Around the same time, scientists learned about the effects of the more rapidly spreading South African and Brazilian varieties.
Phil Dormitzer, Pfizer’s chief vaccine scientist, told Reuters in November that the success of the US drugmaker’s vaccine had shown the virus to be “resistant to immunization.” The scientist called it a “breakthrough for humanity.” However, in early January, he acknowledged that the virus strains had “opened a new chapter,” so companies would have to constantly monitor for mutations that could undermine the effects of vaccines.
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