JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The new variant of COVID-19 identified in South Africa may avoid the antibodies that attack it in treatments using blood plasma from previously recovered patients, and may reduce the effectiveness of the standard line of vaccines, scientists said Wednesday.
Researchers are racing to find out if the vaccines currently being distributed around the world are effective against the so-called 501Y.V2 version, which has been identified by African genomics experts. -South late last year in Nelson Mandela Bay.
“This line represents a complete escape from three classes of therapeutically relevant monoclonal antibodies,” wrote the team of scientists from three South African universities working with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in a paper published in the journal bioRxiv.
“Plus, there’s 501Y. ”
The 501Y.V2 variant is 50% more contagious than its predecessors, South African researchers said this week. It has already spread to at least 20 countries since it was reported to the World Health Organization in late December.
This is one of several new changes discovered in recent months, including others first discovered in England and Brazil.
The main driver variant is the second wave of COVID-19 infections in South Africa, which hit a new daily peak of over 21,000 cases earlier this month, well above the first wave, before falling to around at 12,000 per day.
Convalescent blood plasma from patients has not previously been shown to be effective when administered to critically ill patients requiring intensive care for COVID-19, but it has been approved in several countries as an emergency measure.
British scientists and politicians have expressed concern that vaccines currently in use or being developed may be just as effective against the opposite.
The paper said it was clear the effectiveness of standard vaccines against 501Y.V2, which would only be tested by large-scale clinical trials. But results showed there was a need to design new vaccines to address the growing risk, he said.
Reporting by Tim Cocks; Edited by Peter Graff