| 30/01/2021 – 6:49 PM (GMT-4)
The recently identified variant of the coronavirus in South Africa reduces the protective capacity of some available vaccines against the disease by as much as 50 percent, US experts said.
That information comes from a group of clinical studies with two vaccines, Novavax and Johnson & Johnson, the results of which indicate that their effectiveness, in terms of protective capacity against the disease, has been significantly reduced in light of the South African variant of COVID-19.
The clinical trial in South Africa, where the new variant is widespread, has had disastrous results, according to preliminary data released by both companies.
Novavax reported that its vaccine is 50 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 in South Africans; while in the UK it was up to 89.3% effective.
For its part, J&J stated that a single dose of its coronavirus vaccine was 72 percent effective in the US; but in the African country the effectiveness was barely 57 percent.
There, the new variant, known as B 1,351, constituted 95 percent of the coronavirus cases reported in the trial.
“It is clear that mutations have a diminishing effect on vaccine efficacy,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“We see that we will have problems,” said the expert, for whom the decline in efficacy underscores the need to speed up vaccination efforts before new mutations emerge that could be even more dangerous.
“The best way to prevent a virus from developing is to prevent it from multiplying, and it has succeeded vaccinate people as soon as possible“he warned.
Dan Barouch, researcher Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard University, said “now is another pandemic.”
Barouch, who helped develop the J&J vaccine, said there is now a great diversity of new variants circulating around the world, including in Brazil, South Africa and even the United States, that are substantially resistant to vaccines. induced antibodies.
About Pfizer, one of the most developed vaccines against COVID-19, the company’s advisor, Albert Bourla, said there is “a high probability” that emerging variants will eventually make it ineffective.
“This is not the case yet (…), but I think it is very likely that it will one day,” Bourla said at the World Economic Forum, wondering if something similar would happen to Pfizer.
Company ModernInstead, it reported on Monday that its vaccine was effective against the new variants of coronavirus found.
It also said it plans to initiate clinical trials on a new improved version of its vaccine against the South African variant of COVID-19 as it was shown to cause a reduced antibody response in the licensed version of Moderna, although this result is not yet verifiable.