Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks at a news conference at the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House in Washington on Thursday, January 21, 2021.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Pfizer and Moderna’s current Covid-19 vaccines can be easily adapted to target new strains of the virus, something the drug manufacturers are already working on, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House health adviser, said Wednesday.
New strains of the coronavirus have emerged in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil that have given scientists cause for concern. While it is no surprise that the virus mutates, researchers are trying to quickly determine what the changes could mean for recently developed life-saving vaccines and treatments against the disease.
Some early findings published in the preprint server bioRxiv, which have not yet been evaluated by peers, indicate that the variant identified in South Africa, which scientists call the strain B.1.351, the antibodies produced by some coronavirus treatments provided may elude the effectiveness of currently available vaccines. Fauci said in an interview with CNN that it is very similar to the new strain found in Brazil.
However, there is good news: the newly developed mRNA technology used to make the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna makes it easy to adapt to the new strains, Fauci said. He added that the drug manufacturers are already making so-called ‘booster’ shots aimed at the variant found in South Africa, which seems more problematic than the others.
“We are already trying to stay one or two steps ahead of the game, so if we really have a situation where the South African tension is occurring here – it’s here, but it’s definitely not dominant – you really want to get out. a protectionist point of view, “Fauci said. “You will want a vaccine that specifically addresses that strain.”
Earlier Wednesday, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said federal agencies would work together to investigate how effective Covid-19 vaccines are against mutated strains of the virus. While the authorized remains highly effective against the B.1.1.7 strain first identified in the UK, things with the B.1.351 strain are becoming a bit more problematic.
Although both Covid-19 vaccines are approximately 95% effective in clinical trials, a little pillow may be allowed where the vaccines will still work, although one of the variants reduces their effectiveness, the infectious disease expert said. .
Testing the effectiveness of the booster vaccines does not have to start all over again, Fauci said. The stage increases do not have to undergo the same large-scale clinical trials needed for the original vaccines to receive the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s emergency permits in December, he said, adding that they were using a “rapid phase one trial instead.
“You do not have to try a trial of 30,000 or 40,000 people,” Fauci said. “You work with the FDA and you can bridge information from one trial to another. Finally, we are already working.”
Moderna announced on Monday that its Covid-19 vaccine may be less effective against the B.1.351 strain in South Africa, and that the company is accelerating work on a booster shot to avoid caution against the variant to protect.
Pfizer said Tuesday that the company, along with German drugmaker BioNTech, will also develop a booster shot, according to a Reuters report. A company spokesman was not immediately available to comment on Fauci’s comments.