Study Says The New Coronavirus Is More Resistant To Vaccines

JAKARTA – Covid-19 virus keep mutating. Several new mutated variants of the virus have been detected in several countries. According to a new study, antibodies induced by several the Covid-19 vaccine less effective at neutralizing new variants of the coronavirus as reported in the UK, Brazil and South Africa.

The study was published in the journal Cell and noted that the neutralizing antibodies induced by the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines were less effective against variants of the coronavirus first discovered in South Africa and Brazil.

According to scientists, antibody neutralizers work by binding to the virus tightly and blocking it from entering cells and thus preventing infection. However, this binding only occurs when the antibody and virus are perfectly matched.

If the virus changes form when antibodies attach to it, the antibodies may no longer be able to recognize and neutralize the virus. The scientists compared how well the antibodies worked against the original strain versus the new variant.

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When the scientists tested the new strains against vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies, they found three new strains first described in South Africa were 20-40 times more resistant to neutralization.

The two strains first described in Brazil and Japan were five to seven times more resistant than the original SARS-CoV-2 lineage from Wuhan, China.

“In particular we found that mutations in certain parts of the spike protein called the receptor binding domain were more likely to help the virus fight off neutralizing antibodies,” said one of the study authors as reported by the Times of India on Monday (15/3/2021).

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