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British health officials said earlier this week that the mutation of the British coronavirus that worries the world is likely not as severe as the South African mutation. Called 501. V2, the latter can also easily evade vaccines.
The vaccines will work with the B. 1. 1. 7 strain, which is largely to blame for the large COVID-19 outbreak in the UK right now. Health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci have said in recent interviews that COVID-19 survivors are not likely to be infected with B. 1. 1. 7, indicating that neutralizing antibodies and other COVID-19-specific immune cells are still acting against the virus. This implies that the vaccines will also continue to be effective against the strain. BioNTech and Moderna said in statements that the vaccines will work against the mutation.
Former FDA leader Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in an interview that the South African strain is really concerning and that it addresses the problem more than British officials. Apparently, 501. V2 can avoid antibody-based drugs, which is not good news.
“The South African variant is very concerning right now because it looks like it could affect some of our medical countermeasures, i. e. antibody-based drugs,” Gottlieb told CNBC’s The News with Shepard Smith. “Right now, this strain happens to be prevalent in South America and Brazil, the two parts of the world that are in late summer, are also experiencing a very dense outbreak, and that’s concerning.
Gottlieb noted experimental evidence from the Bloom Lab, stating that 501. V2 appears to evade prior immunity. This means that other people who survived COVID-19 can be reinfected with the new strain.
Among the implications: E484K (South African lineage) is concerned about immune leakage; RBD mutations in the British lineage are as follows (1/n).
— Bloom Lab (@jbloom_lab) January 5, 2021
“The new variant has mutated a part of the spike protein that our antibodies bind to, to try to clear the virus itself, so this is concerning,” Gottlieb said. “Now, the vaccine can become a backstop against these variants really getting more of a foothold here in the United States, but we need to quicken the pace of vaccination.”
“It’s a race against trying to get more vaccines to people before these new variants become more prevalent here in the United States,” Gottlieb said.
If the 501.V2 strain can evade antibodies, then it will evade all antibodies that can bind to the spike protein of the original coronavirus strains. This includes neutralizing antibodies that the immune system produces in response to the SARS-CoV-2 infection, the neutralizing antibodies used in monoclonal drug therapies like the drug President Trump took during his bout with COVID-19, and the neutralizing antibodies that vaccines will elicit.
It’s unclear how effective the vaccines will be against the South African strain, as more studies will be needed. Drug brands can adapt their vaccines to deal with the new 501. V2 spike, but it will take some time. Although vaccines and antibodies are less effective than 501. V2, they may still offer some protection.
“Mutations that maximize antibody binding occur at only a few sites in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) binding motif,” states the Bloom Lab abstract. “The most important site is E484, where neutralization through certain sera is reduced through more than 10-fold through various mutations, adding one in emerging viral lineages in South Africa and Brazil. In the future, these serum escape maps may indicate the monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 evolution.
The Bloom Lab study is available as a preprint at this link, but the studies are not reviewed.
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