COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Appear Effective Against Multiple Variants

“This is really good news,” Annelies Wilder-Smith, an infectious disease researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who was not connected to the study, tells The New York Times. “At this point in time we can confidently say that we can use this vaccine, even in the presence of circulating variants of concern.”

In NEJM, the researchers analyzed data from more than 200,000 individuals in Qatar, with estimates that 45 percent of cases were due to B.1.1.7 and around 50 percent were caused by the SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.351, which first emerged in South Africa. Those who were fully vaccinated (here defined as 14 days after the second dose) had roughly 90 percent protection against severe disease with B.1.351 and B.1.1.7, which has been suspected of being more transmissible and more deadly. The protection against infection with B.1.351 was around 75 percent.

“We should expect a degree of reduction in protection against B.1.351, but not to the extent we should be freaking out about it,” microbiologist John Moore of Weill Cornell Medicine who was not involved in the study, tells The Washington Post.

See “Side-by-Side Comparisons of Important SARS-CoV-2 Variants”

In the statement distributed yesterday, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel discussed an ongoing Phase 2 study meant to assess protection against the variants B.1.351 and P.1 (which originated in Brazil) through a third shot of either a half dose of the standard COVID-19 vaccine or a booster designed with B.1.351 in mind. Forty participants who had been fully vaccinated six to eight months prior were given one of the booster shots, and 15 days later, everyone in the trial had levels of antibodies against the variants and the initially dominant type of the virus that exceeded levels typically following primary vaccination, CNN reports.