Although COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be effective against the South African coronavirus variant – according to an infectious disease expert – the former head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the strain has other countermeasures, including antibodies , can “weaken” drugs.
The South African virus variant, known as 501Y.V2, has caused serious concern, and the strain has been described as more contagious than the COVID-19 virus identified at the start of the pandemic. In South Africa, it quickly became dominant in the country’s coastal areas.
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Dr Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner, told CNBC’s Shepard Smith late Tuesday that it appears the strain could escape immunity to recovery plasma and previous infection.
“The South African variant is currently very worrying because it seems to be preventing some of our medical countermeasures, especially the antibody products,” Gottlieb said, pointing to evidence from Bloom Lab.
The variant involves mutations on the ear protein, including E484K, although the laboratory said the changes “reduce neutralizing activity but do not weaken it.”
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Gottlieb stressed that rapid vaccination is of paramount importance amid worrying tensions already identified in Austria, Switzerland, Japan, France, Zambia and the United Kingdom, according to a CNBC report.
“The vaccine may be a turning point against these variants that are gaining more traction in America, but we need to speed up the vaccination rate,” the former FDA chief said.
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A top official at the World Health Organization said on Tuesday that there was no indication that the virus was more or less transmissible than the separate mutated strain detected in the UK.
“There is no indication that the 501Y.V2 variant has increased portability compared to the British variant,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO technical COVID-19, said during an information session and noted that many ongoing studies in South Africa look at the variant. circulation and transferability in modeling and neutralization studies. “But there is no indication that it is more or less transmissible than the Variant of Concern identified in the United Kingdom.”
That said, the British secretary of Britain warned on Monday that the coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa was a ‘very important problem’ and that it posed a greater risk than others.
‘My concern is that it looks the same [easier] to send out as the new variant we saw here, and it was obviously a big challenge to control the new variant in the UK, ‘Hancock said. He noted that two cases of the South African variant had been detected in the United Kingdom on Monday.
Fox News’ Alexandria Hein and Madeline Farber contributed to this report.