11–20 of 131 posts
We can’t have the whole world economy in lockdown because a new strain spread because prior immunization is ineffective against the variant.
Is this just one of the hundreds of variants that have been found so far but do not spread widely, or is there some reason to believe this variant is more easily spread and will become common?
> As of 30 December, the 501Y.V2 variant from South Africa has been reported from four other countries to date.
https://www.who.int/csr/don/31-december-2020-sars-cov2-varia...
Pulling directly from TFA, > Here we show that this lineage exhibits complete escape from three classes of therapeutically relevant monoclonal antibodies. Furthermore 501Y.V2 shows substantial or complete escape from neutralizing antibodies in COVID-19 convalescent plasma. These data highlight the prospect of reinfection with antigenically distinct variants and may foreshadow reduced efficacy of current spike-based v…
A new mutation of COVID19 has been discovered in an South African donor. With this mutation, the spike protein changed which might render all existing vaccinations less effective or even ineffective.
"These data highlight the prospect of reinfection with antigenically distinct variants and may foreshadow reduced efficacy of current spike-based vaccines."
So it suggests that only spike-based vaccines may have reduced efficacy against it. I suppose the inactivated-virus vaccines should be fine. Which would put China and India at huge advantage (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus...).
A new mutation of COVID19 has been discovered in an South African donor. With this mutation, the spike protein changed which might render all existing vaccinations less effective or even ineffective.
Note that 1. The sera they tested this against obtained antibodies through natural infection. It's not clear whether vaccine-induced immunity is protective against this variant. 2. They only tested for neutralizing antibodies, but there is still T-Cell response which could provide protection.
Worth noting that this study isn't peer reviewed yet.
If we can expect more surprises like this, movement will have to be curtailed till we’re sure we have things under control (like SARS). We can’t have the whole world economy in lockdown because a new strain spread because prior immunization is ineffective against the variant.
Is this just one of the hundreds of variants that have been found so far but do not spread widely, or is there some reason to believe this variant is more easily spread and will become common?
Yes, there are two reasons: increasing natural immunity and vaccinations.
If we can expect more surprises like this, movement will have to be curtailed till we’re sure we have things under control (like SARS). We can’t have the whole world economy in lockdown because a new strain spread because prior immunization is ineffective against the variant.
It would seem that the horse is already out of the barn. Flights would have needed to be curtailed much earlier. In addition, we're seeing similar mutations popping up independently in geographical areas - seems to be evolutionary pressure in these directions.