As the coronavirus variant in California continues to spread across the Golden State and beyond, new research suggests that several vaccines still need to provide an effective defense against it.
The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, provide a good reason for Californians to keep up their sleeves as the vaccination campaign picks up steam in the state.
“We do not expect this variant to be a problem for the vaccines, so that’s really good news,” said study leader David Montefiori, a virologist at Duke University.
The California variant is actually a few closely related travel companions known as B.1.427 and B.1.429. Scientists say they most likely showed up in the state in May and then became the strongest theory amid the deadly holiday.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they accounted for 56% of samples from California that were genetically followed between February 28 and March 13. They have appeared in every state and District of Columbia and spread to Australia, Singapore, Israel and Denmark.
The California tribe is just one of the so-called worrying variants followed by the CDC. Others include B.1.1.7, from the United Kingdom, the P.1 variant from Brazil and the B.1.351 variant from South Africa. They threaten because they are more transmissible, more virulent or vaccine-resistant than their predecessors.
Scientists and public health officials aim to destroy these variants by vaccinating the population as quickly as possible. Not only will this hinder its spread, but it will also deprive them of the opportunity to acquire new mutations that could make them even more dangerous.
As these coronavirus variants have emerged and spread far beyond their areas of origin, they have expressed concern whether the current crop of vaccines will effectively protect against them. This is because the variant has acquired genetic mutations that affect the ear protein, which uses the virus to invade and invade human cells – and which uses the vaccines as a target.
The fear is that the mutations could alter the peak protein so much that an immune system trained to recognize an earlier version of the virus would not recognize a variant, leaving a vaccinated person without any biological defense.
So a team of researchers decided to test two vaccines.
They tested blood samples from people who received the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Moderna or a Novavax vaccine candidate that has not yet been approved in the United States. Then they present designed versions of viral variants to these blood samples and wait to see what kind of immune system response they elicit.
The dominant strain in the US is called D614G, and it has been neutralized by blood from people who have received one of the vaccines.
The California variant they tested, B.1.429, was slightly less susceptible to both the Moderna and Novavax vaccines, but both shots still provided effective protection, the researchers found. This is because the body generates much higher antibody levels than are needed to neutralize the virus, Montefiori said.
And although the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has not been studied in this article, it will probably work just as well as the Modern vaccine, as both use similar technologies, he said.
“People in Los Angeles can feel very good about taking the current vaccines – that they are just as protected by the vaccines as people living in areas where they do not have the California variant,” Montefiori said.
“It’s always nice to get such a result,” he added.
But with both vaccines, there was a significant decrease in performance compared to the South African variant.
These lab results were not ideal, but they were not exactly a surprise. In clinical trials, the Novavax vaccine was 89% effective in the United Kingdom, but only 49% effective in South Africa, where B.1.351 predominates.
Similarly, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which reduced the risk of moderate to severe disease by 72% when tested in the US, was only 57% effective in South Africa. And a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford did not work better than a placebo when tested in a South African clinical trial.
The new article was one of many published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday on viral variants and vaccines.
A team of South African researchers who have tested blood plasma of patients infected with the South African infection report that their antibodies still offer a significant degree of protection against the ‘original’ version of the coronavirus, as well as the Brazilian tribe.
The result: vaccines designed to target the B.1.351 version of the ear protein may be effective against a variety of variants, the researchers suggested.
In another article, scientists in Israel examined the antibody response in blood samples from six infected health workers and later received one dose of Pfizer vaccine. They found that their immune systems improved after vaccination against the original virus and the British, Brazilian and South African variants, with antibody responses that were 114, 203, 81 and 228 times as high as before their shots, respectively.
“This emphasizes the importance of vaccination, even in previously infected patients, given the added benefit of an increased antibody response to the tested variants,” the researchers wrote.
The South African variant may raise concerns about vaccine resistance, but so far it has done nothing but establish a foothold in the US, Montefiori said. According to the CDC, as of Tuesday, there were 386 confirmed cases involving B.1.351, compared to 16 275 involving the British variant.
It is important to keep in mind that these types of tests do not measure the full degree of protection that a vaccine offers to a real person, said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at UC San Francisco, said she was not involved in the new research. .
These tests, for example, look at antibodies, but not T cells, which contain another important part of the immune system’s defenses.
“This is a lab study,” Gandhi said. “It does not tell us in real life whether these vaccines will not be able to elicit enough T cells, which are very difficult to measure, to destroy the South African virus.”
John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medical College who was not involved in the new work, agrees.
There is just as much that can be extrapolated because of the immune response found in blood samples, but a study like this provides helpful clues “whether different variants are a problem for vaccines or not,” Moore said. “It’s a guide.”