Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said Johnson & Johnson and Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccines will still be vital tools against new, emerging variants of the virus – even though the companies have said their shots may be less potent against one strain. found in South Africa.
On January 28, Novavax said its vaccine was nearly 90% effective in protecting against Covid-19 in its phase three study conducted in the UK, but had a muted response in South Africa, with an efficacy rate of only 49.4% among 44 cases. in the country. A day later, J&J said the vaccine was 66% effective overall, but only 57% effective in South Africa, where strain B.1.351 is spreading rapidly.
Gates, whose foundation has donated millions to coronavirus vaccines and treatment research, told CNBC that the two vaccines, which are not yet approved for use in the United States, still have “many potential against” variants.
People understand that “there is reduced efficacy, although Novavax and Johnson & Johnson still have many options against those variants,” he told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview aired Thursday on “Squawk Box.”
Gates wondered whether a third dose of a vaccine would be enough to protect against new variants.
“There is a rich dialogue between our foundation, Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and the other people in the government are talking about this variation of strategy right now, ”said Gates, the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and co-founder of Microsoft.
Gates’ comments come as US officials urge Americans to be vaccinated as soon as possible before potentially new and even more dangerous variants of the virus emerge.
As of Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified 1,277 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant that were first identified in the UK.The agency has identified 19 cases of the B.1.351 strain from South Africa, as well as three cases of P .1, a variant first identified in Brazil.
The US must rapidly deploy Covid-19 vaccines and speed up genetic sequencing of variants before the virus can mutate again and make the pandemic worse, the head of the CDC said in an article published Wednesday.
The B.1.1.7 variant has proven highly transferable and “preliminary data suggests the possibility of increased disease severity with infection,” wrote CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in a research opinion published in the Journal of the American Medical Association of JAMA.
Fauci, the White House’s chief medical advisor and country’s chief infectious disease expert, has said repeatedly in recent weeks that viruses cannot mutate if they do not have hosts to infect and cannot multiply.
Fauci also recently praised J & J’s vaccine, saying that while it turned out to be less effective than Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, it was still able to keep people out of the hospital and prevent them from developing serious illness. to get.
“The most important thing, more important than keeping someone from getting sore and sore throats, is preventing people from getting serious illness,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said during a phone call with reporters Jan. . “That will alleviate so much of the stress and human suffering and death in this epidemic.
Gates was also convinced that countries and drug manufacturers will be able to speed up production so that there are enough doses to immunize the world. He added that getting photos in developing countries is the “only way to end the pandemic”.