Durban, South Africa The race to vaccinate people against COVID-19 has been made even more urgent by the need for new, more contagious variants of the coronavirus. CBS News barely has access to a laboratory in South Africa studying one of the studies more worrying new tribes of the virus, which apparently has at least resistance to the antibodies that create vaccines in the human body to ward off the bug.
Virus hunters in the high-risk bio-hazard laboratory in Durban are hot on the trail of the mutant strain that is spreading across South Africa at an incredible speed. The virus has mutated to attach itself more easily to human cells, which does not make the disease more deadly, but helps to spread it much more easily.
“We believe we are experiencing a new pandemic with this variant that not only transmits much faster, but also neutralizes less,” genetic scientist Tulio de Oliveira told CBS News.
De Oliveira discovers the new variant after observing a dramatic increase in infections in November. His colleagues in the highly secure laboratory have developed a vibrant culture to accelerate their research.
Alex Sigal is a senior researcher at the Africa Health Research Institute and at the Max Planck Institute for Infectious Biology in Germany. He says the new strain discovered in South Africa appears to have the potential to significantly reduce the effectiveness of antibodies in people infected with the original version of the virus.
“Tenfold would be conservative,” he told CBS News, but “you could also have a full-blown outcome,” meaning that one’s natural defense against the original strain of the virus could be useless against the variant in South Africa. Africa.
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This means that those infected in the first wave may have little protection against the new strain, and even more worryingly, it may make some of the vaccines less effective.
“Obviously we have underestimated this virus,” he says. “On the other hand, there is still no evidence that vaccines will be affected, and people should definitely keep vaccinating, because that is the solution to this pandemic.”
In the country’s central laboratory, scientists emphasize that immunity is only part of the picture. Data on how effective the vaccines are against the new strain will not be available for a few weeks, but in the future vaccines will need to be adjusted every now and then to protect against mutant strains – just as the annual flu shot has been for years .