Modern President: Some COVID Strains Can ‘Hide Better’ Against Vaccines

As new variants of COVID-19 emerge around the world, vaccine developers are keeping a close eye on how each one will keep up with their doses.

On the radar are new virus strains from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil – all of which have been detected in the United States – and some are more worrying than others.

“As we follow the data in the pandemic, we see that some of the new emerging strains may be better able to hide from the vaccines,” said Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna, Inc. in Cambridge, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” ​​on ABC. Monday. ‘The good news now is that the vaccines seem to be working against all emerging strains. This is good news. But there are a few … the South African one is of course worrying, as it seems to be able to hide a little better for the vaccine than others. ‘

Last week, Moderna announced that the company plans to conduct a clinical trial for a ‘booster’ shot to better combat the South African variant after its studies showed that the vaccine has a weaker immune response to the mutation. caused than towards others.

The company said the vaccine should still provide adequate protection against the variant. But the lower antibody count produced by the vaccine in light of the variant could suggest a possible risk of earlier weakening of immunity, ‘Moderna said in a statement.

“Our approach at Moderna will be to develop a booster vaccine, so that if the South African variant or any other variant becomes a problem, we can offer a way to … prevent it from hiding for the vaccine. , “Said Hoge.

Asked how Moderna is able to develop a vaccine to address new variants, Hoge said scientists are able to learn what a variant looks like because of sequence information.

He calls it ‘one of the great advances in pandemic in science worldwide’.

‘What we may then do because of our technology, mRNA, is to actually copy that information and paste it into our vaccination cassettes and then just add it to the vaccine so that your immune system when you get the vaccine will also have the variant can identify, ”said Hoge.