16:47 28.03.2021(updated 16:51 28.03.2021) Short url
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In the event of a sharp increase in contamination and against the background of a vaccination campaign, a possible new mutation of SARS-CoV-2 could survive existing vaccines, said the director of the German Federal Chancellery, Helge Braun, at Bild am Sonntag.
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As the question of the effectiveness of anti-Covid vaccines against mutations becomes increasingly relevant, Germany has warned of the risk of a new resistant variant.
The director of the Federal Chancellery, Helge Braun, estimated that this could happen if new cases soar.
“If the number of infections increases rapidly again in parallel with the vaccination campaign, the next viral mutation is more likely to become resistant to the vaccines,” he said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag.
Since February, the country has been affected by an upsurge in cases of contamination. On March 27, more than 20,000 people tested positive and 157 died.
Use of current vaccines
In early March, German researchers were reassuring in the face of the appearance of SARS-CoV-2 variants. Already existing platforms for Covid vaccines can serve as good tools to respond to transformations in the virus, said Marylyn Addo, virologist and professor at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, at Deutsche Welle.
Both mRNA vaccines (BioNTech / Pfizer and Moderna), as well as viral vector vaccines can be quickly modified to work against new strains of the coronavirus, she said.
However, there is no question of producing a new generation of vaccines. Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNtech, said his pharmaceutical company was synthesizing and neutralizing variants of the virus.
“We are trying to define whether the antibodies are able to detect and neutralize the modified virus. For now, the tests are successful, ”he said, quoted by the German media.
Effective Russian vaccines
At least two Russian vaccines are showing their effectiveness against mutations in the virus, their manufacturers say. The ability of the virus to mutate was taken into account by the designers of Sputnik V at the stage of its development, declared in January the director of the Gamaleïa Center, Alexandre Guinzbourg. In March, he also claimed that the vaccine did protect against the English variant of Covid-19.
According to Fiodor Lisitsyne, chief specialist of the same establishment, none of the variants of the existing virus which are the subject of continuous surveillance by Russian researchers, can reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Finally, the total effectiveness of the second Russian vaccine developed by the National Center for Research in Virology and Biotechnology Vector, EpiVacCorona, against variants of the virus, was confirmed by the head of the department of zoonotic infections and influenza, Alexandre Ryzhikov, on the Rossiya 24 television channel.
On March 24, a new European plan to put vaccines into service that have been shown to be effective against new variants of the coronavirus was communicated by the European Commission.
The registration request for Sputnik V was filed with the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which informed the start of its review in early March. The approval of EpiVacCorona has not been sought in the European Union.
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