Vaccines work against Brazil P.1 variant
But that's puzzling. And it may be getting too late for Brazil.
Oxford university has an updated preprint out that is in the news. They tested Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines against some known variants of concern of the coronavirus, namely:
the UK “Kent” variant B.1.1.7
Brazil’s P.1 and
South Africa B.1.351
The vaccines were equally effective against the UK and Brazil variants, but less so against the South African one. This is intriguing. The Brazil and South Africa variants have very similar mutations and most people have been expecting similar reductions in efficacy against both. The researchers comment:
All have mutations in the ACE2 binding site with P.1 and B.1.351 having a virtually identical triplet: E484K, 61 K417N/T and N501Y, which we show confer similar increased affinity for ACE2. We show that, surprisingly, P.1 is significantly less resistant to naturally acquired or vaccine induced antibody responses than B.1.351 suggesting that changes outside the RBD impact neutralization [emphasis mine: RM]
So there is some other unaccounted-for mutation that makes South Africa’s variant more problematic? It could be very important as to just what that is!
Anyway, this is great news because we already know that both vaccines are very effective against B.1.1.7 (see here and here). Ergo, there should be no problem dealing with P.1!
This is also good for Moderna and Novavax. The first because it is very similar to Pfizer and the second because Novavax’s UK trial already showed 95% effectiveness against B.1.1.7.
I do wonder though if this is too late for Brazil. City hospitals are near collapse. Meanwhile, vaccination is delayed due to all sorts of problems. There were supply issues from India/China and recriminations between Bolsonaro’s people and the vaccine makers. Brazil will be lucky to receive their 100 million doses of AstraZeneca by the end of Q2. Another 100 million will start arriving from Pfizer only in late June, which seems like an eternity in coronavirus-time.
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