scientists are still cautious
It seems to be official. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine protects also against the new Covid variants. Scientists are still cautious, but research outcomes lead towards this way.
Currently, both the UK and the South African strains are spreding fast in Britain. Both of them contains mutations that alterate the spike protein of the virus, that is to say the target of the vaccine.
Pfizer scientist thus conducted a study (not peer-reviewed yet) to check the efficacy of their vaccine. Results show that antibodies produced by the vaccine work against the strains. As of today, Pfizer tested the vaccine on 16 new type of variants, yet none of them significantly impacted on the effectiveness of the jab.
Of course, scientists welcomed the news, but are still cautious about it, since more studies are to be done.
Amongst the most positive, there are Daniel Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, and Eleanor Riley, professor of immunology and infectious disease at the University of Edinburgh.
“This is indeed an important finding to calm any concerns about lack of vaccine coverage for the variants. His “neutralisation looks excellent from this study”. Said Altmann.
Riley confirmed indeed Altmann impressions. “So far, so good. There will be other new mutants and we will need to monitor the situation carefully by repeating this type of study on new variants as they appear. It may be necessary to tweak the vaccine over time“.
Anyway, microbiology professor at University of Cambridge Ravi Gupta doomed the research. He said it only observed the only mutation “which was not expected to have significant impact alone”.
As of today, UK is under lockdown, while the vaccination campaign is proceeding quite swiflty.
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