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Coronavirus vaccines: signs of weaker response to new strains in South Africa, Brazil
- Two mRNA shots less able to neutralise variant that emerged near Cape Town, Boston researchers find in non-peer-reviewed study
- People should still get the jabs to guard against severe disease, virologist says
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Stephen Chenin Beijing
Coronavirus variants emerging from the southern hemisphere can weaken the most powerful vaccines but people should still have the shots to guard against severe disease, according to researchers.
In a non-peer-reviewed study published last week, a team in Boston found a drop in the amount of the mutated South Africa strain neutralised by antibodies induced by the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines of between 75 and 97-fold. The drop was 13-fold against another strain circulating in Brazil.
“Strikingly, neutralisation of all three South African B.1.351 strains was substantially decreased,” the researchers said.
Similar trends were reported by researchers in Germany and the US National Institutes of Health.
The lead scientist of the Boston study, Alejandro Balazs from the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, said authorities should monitor cases to “ensure that we have a clear view of which variants are responsible for new infections”.
“I believe several companies have already announced that they would begin development of an updated booster shot,” Balazs said in the paper published on preprint platform medRxiv.
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