Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks at a press conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington on Thursday, January 21, 2021.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Pfizer’s and Moderna’s current Covid-19 vaccines can be easily adapted to target new strains of the virus, something the drug makers are already working on, said health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci of the White House Wednesday.
New strains of the coronavirus have surfaced in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil that have given scientists some cause for concern. While it’s no surprise that the virus is mutating, researchers are quickly trying to determine what the changes could mean for recently developed life-saving vaccines and treatments for the disease.
Some early findings published in preprint server bioRxiv, which are not yet to be peer-reviewed, indicate that the variant identified in South Africa, what scientists call the B.1.351 strain, can evade the antibodies that are provided by some coronavirus treatments and the effectiveness of the current range of vaccines available. Fauci told CNN in an interview that it was very similar to the new species found in Brazil.
There’s good news, though: The newly developed mRNA technology used to make the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines makes it easy to adapt to the new strains, Fauci said. He added that the drug manufacturers are already creating so-called ‘booster’ shots targeting 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 that if we actually have a situation where the South African kind prevails here – it’s here, but it’s certainly not dominant – then you really want to get for protection, “Fauci said.” You’ll want a vaccine that targets that strain specifically. “
Earlier on 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 individuals remain highly effective against the B.1.1.7 strain first identified in the UK, “things are getting a little more problematic” with the B.1.351 strain.
Even then, both vaccines have proven to be about 95% effective at preventing Covid-19 in clinical trials, providing a little bit of cushion where the vaccines will still work, even if one of the variants reduces their effectiveness, the company said. infectious disease expert. .
To test the effectiveness of the booster vaccines, you don’t have to start from scratch, Fauci said. The booster shots don’t have to go through the same large-scale clinical trials it took for the original vaccines to be received by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December, he said, adding that they could get through with a “fast phase instead. a test.
“You don’t have to do a 30,000 person trial or a 40,000 person trial,” Fauci said. “You’re working with the FDA and you could be bridging information from one study to another. The bottom line is that we’re already working on it.”
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 speeding up work on a booster shot to protect itself against that variant “out of a plethora of caution. “.
Pfizer said Tuesday that the company, along with German drug manufacturer BioNTech, would also develop a boost, according to a report from Reuters. A company spokesperson was not immediately available to respond to Fauci’s comments.
– CNBC’s Will Feuer and Berkeley Lovelace Jr. contributed to this report.