A new covid variant may affect vaccines, according to a study by Public Health England, which could mutate and cause COVID-19 to avoid antibody defense has now been found in the rapid spread of a new strain in the UK.
The mutation that is called E484K was already part of the genetic signature that is from South Africa and Brazil-linked variants.
New COVID Variant May Affect the COVID Vaccines
According to the PHE study, the mutation has recently been observed in at least 11 UK new covid variant strain B.1.1.7 samples. It also seems like some of these samples may spread from a single event, and may have developed this mutation independently.
It may mean that a form that is already considered to be more transmissible often risks being somewhat resistant or more likely to cause reinfection among people who were previously infected, experts claim, to the immune defense provided by vaccines.
"This doesn't appear to be great news for vaccine efficacy," Joseph Fauver said. Fauver is an associate research scientist in epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.
He added that the discovery is also something that should continue to be monitored in the US, where efforts have lagged behind the UK to search for a new covid variant through genetic sequencing. Fauver said that the fact that we've only seen this in the UK "may be a result of their robust genomic surveillance program,"
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Experts say that it's still too early to tell whether Covid-19's trajectory in the UK and around the world will be significantly affected by this growth. However, there is some evidence suggesting that E484K could be a key culprit behind why some vaccines in South Africa seem less successful.
Ovavax recently revealed its vaccine was 89 percent effective in its Phase 3 UK trial but only appeared 60 percent effective in a separate Phase 2b study conducted in South Africa. Similarly, in Johnson & Johnson's Phase 3 trial, the country's efficacy: 72 percent in the US versus 57 percent in South Africa. In both studies, 90 to 95 percent of South African cases were associated with the B.1.351 variant that contains the E484K mutation.
But much of the early evidence of this so-called "escape mutant" comes from laboratory studies, which reveal that antibodies tend to be less capable of binding the mutation-derived spike proteins.
The research sampled blood from 23 individuals who received a single dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine three weeks earlier, with a median age of 82 years. The research could not show how this influenced the real risk of people being infected with variants of the virus.
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The new covid variant vaccine is more important.
Paul Bieniasz, a Rockefeller University virologist, noted that the E484K mutation had "appeared sporadically" in different samples for months. Still, until recently, it did not appear to give an advantage to the virus in populations without pre-existing immunity.
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US said that the B.1.1.7 strain first spotted in the UK has now been reported in at least 70 countries worldwide, including around 470 documented cases in the US.
Experts say that given these spreading variations, aggressive research, adhering to Covid-19 recommendations, and quickly rolling out vaccines are more critical than ever.
"We need to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can," Fauci previously said. "Even though there is a diminished protection against the variants, there's enough protection to prevent you from getting the serious disease, including hospitalization and deaths."
