A photo taken on January 15, 2021 shows a pharmacist holding with gloved hands an ampoule of the undiluted Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for Covid-19, stored at -70 ° in a super freezer at the hospital of Le Mans, northwestern France as the country is conducting a vaccination campaign to combat the spread of the new corona virus.
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 first surfaced in the UK in September 2020. It has an unusually high number of mutations and is associated with a more efficient and faster transmission.
The characteristics of the variant raised concerns about the effectiveness of Covid vaccines against it.
However, research published on the preprint server bioRxiv showed “no biologically significant difference in neutralization activity” between the laboratory tests on B.1.1.7 and the original coronavirus strain.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that all mutations associated with the newly discovered variant were neutralized by antibodies in the blood of 16 participants who had previously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 between 56 and 85 years old.
The study authors warned that the rapid spread of Covid variants around the world “requires continuous monitoring of the importance of changes for continued protection by currently approved vaccines.”
It is the first paper of its kind to be completed by a major manufacturer of Covid vaccines, as other pharmaceutical companies rush to run tests on the effectiveness of their own respective vaccinations.
Moderna and AstraZeneca, which has developed a Covid vaccine in collaboration with the University of Oxford, have both said before that they expect their vaccines to be effective against 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 was confident their vaccine would develop an immune response against B.1.1.7.
Sahin said he believed the vaccine should also prove effective against a variant discovered in South Africa – another highly communicable variant that has raised concern among public health experts.
His comments came shortly after initial tests showed that Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine was found 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 showing that the vaccine is likely to be effective against all mutations related to B.1.1.7.
In recent weeks, optimism about the massive rollout of Covid vaccines worldwide has been tempered by the resurgence of virus spread.
To date, more than 96.2 million people have contracted the coronavirus, with 2.05 million deaths, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.