Genetics experts coronavirus UK variant vaccines are working

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“This is the first variation I’ve seen during the entire pandemic, where I stepped back and said, ‘Ho,’” he recalls.

Health officials have downplayed the possibility that the coronavirus vaccines won’t work against the British strain, but Worobey and other scientists think it’s a possibility – and it’s just a possibility – that this new variant is, to some extent, the vaccines.

“This is the first variant I’ve seen where I think there’s a burning question,” said Worobey, chief of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.

Trevor Bedford, associate professor in the vaccines and infectious diseases division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is also keeping a close eye on the British variant.

Large clinical studies have shown that the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are about 95% effective against the novel coronavirus. However, those tests were conducted before the British variant started its explosive growth.

Bedford said he doesn’t believe the vaccine will be useless against the new British strain, but that it could reduce its effectiveness somewhat.

“It could reduce the vaccine’s effectiveness from 95% to about 80% or 85%,” he said. “It would be a modest effect, not a dramatic effect.”

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Health officials have said there is no reason to think the vaccine will not work against the new variant.

“[There is] no evidence to suggest, nor reason to believe, that it would evade our vaccines that we now have, ”said Deputy Secretary for Health, Admiral Dr. Brett Giroir Monday.

“This particular variant in the UK, I think, is very unlikely to have escaped vaccine immunity,” Moncef Slaoui, the chief of Operation Warp Speed, said Sunday.

But some scientists point out that this mutation is not like others that have preceded it.

“We shouldn’t immediately conclude (as many have done) that the not a concern, “Kristian Andersen, a professor in the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research Andersen wrote to CNN.” We just don’t know right now – but we should know more soon. ”

Bette Korber, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has also investigated the variant.

“The mutations are indeed concerning, they ALL need to be tested,” Bette Korber, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, wrote to CNN when asked if the new mutation was a problem for the vaccine.

The British variant has an unusually large number of mutations – 14 changes and 3 deletions in the genetic code that affect the building blocks of the proteins, the CDC said.
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“This virus has 17 unique mutations that have not been seen anywhere else, which is really unusual,” said Worobey.

“The increase in 14 lineage-specific amino acid replacements prior to detection is to date unprecedented in the global genomic data of viruses for the Covid-19 pandemic,” British scientists reported last week.

Some scientists are concerned not only about the number of mutations, but also about the way they work together.

“Many of these mutations have been characterized in the laboratory and we know something about them. Their combination (along with other changes), however, has not been characterized,” Bedford tweeted on Tuesday.
Pfizer and Moderna are testing the vaccine to see if it works against the new variant.

Dr. Ugur Sahin, BioNTech’s CEO, said he doesn’t think the new variant will cause a problem, but if it does, the vaccine can be updated.

“We should not forget that we still have the ability to tailor the vaccine exactly to this new virus variant if necessary,” said Sahin. “I don’t think this is necessary. But if it were, there is a technical possibility to do that.”

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