A photo taken on January 15, 2021 shows a pharmacist holding gloves with a vial of the undiluted Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for Covid-19, stored at -70 ° in a super-freezer of Le Mans Hospital , Northern France, as the country launches a vaccination campaign to combat the spread of the new coronavirus.
Jean-Francois Monier | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – The coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech is likely to be just as effective against a highly transmissible mutant strain of the virus first discovered in the UK, according to a study by the two companies.
The variant, known as B.1.1.7., Was estimated to occur in the United Kingdom in September 2020. It has an extraordinary number of mutations and is associated with more efficient and faster transmission.
The characteristics of the variant have led to concerns about the efficacy of Covid vaccines against it.
However, research published on the preprint server bioRxiv showed that there was ‘no biologically significant difference in neutralization activity’ between the laboratory tests on B.1.1.7 and the original strain of the coronavirus.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that all mutations associated with the newly discovered variant were neutralized by antibodies in the blood of 16 participants who had previously received the vaccine.
Half of the participants were between 18 and 55 years old and the other half were between 56 and 85 years old.
Authors of the study warned that the rapid spread of Covid variants worldwide requires ‘continuous monitoring of the importance of changes to the protection afforded by currently authorized vaccines’.
This is the first article of its kind to be completed by a major Covid vaccine manufacturer, while other pharmaceutical companies are trying to do tests on the effectiveness of their own vaccinations.
Moderna and AstraZeneca, which in collaboration with the University of Oxford have developed a vaccine for Covid, both said earlier that they expect their vaccines to be effective at B.1.1.7.
Virus spread
Earlier this month, dr. Ugur Sahin, co-founder and CEO of BioNTech, told CNBC that the German pharmaceutical company is confident that their vaccine will develop an immune response against B.1.1.7.
Sahin said he believed the vaccine should also be effective against a variant discovered in South Africa – another highly contagious variant that is of concern to public health experts.
His comments come shortly after initial tests showed that Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine appears to be effective against a major mutation in the more contagious variants of the virus discovered in the UK and South Africa. Now, scientists from the two companies have published research indicating that the vaccine is likely to be effective against all mutations associated with B.1.1.7.
In recent weeks, optimism about the massive deployment of Covid vaccines worldwide has been tempered by the rising rate of virus spread.
To date, more than 96.2 million people have contracted the coronavirus, with 2.05 million deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.