A study found in India that the existing COVID-19 vaccines should be effective against the Indian variant, not just the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
India is now the epicenter of the COVID-19 epidemic. Every day for an entire week the country reported an average of 340,000 new COVID-19 cases. This comes to one in every three infections reported globally per day.
“The major factor in the spread of the virus is the behavior of the people,” said Rakesh Mishra, director of the Indian Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology. “Spread of the virus is largely because of us not taking care of each other. Variants are just taking advantage of our carelessness.”
Nonetheless, feeding the surge in India is what is being dubbed a “double mutant” variant, B.1.617, which had two key mutations observed in other coronavirus variants. It has also been identified in other countries, including the U.S.
The variant was actually first sequenced in a global database of COVID-19 variants in October 2020 but went largely unnoticed. The B.1.617 strain carries features from two lineages, the California variants (B.1.427 and B.1.429) and the ones in South Africa (B.1.351) and Brazil (P.1). The Indian variant’s two prominent mutations include a position 452 of the spike protein and the second at 484. “Double mutation” isn’t a remarkably accurate description, Mishra said.
B.1.617 carries a total of 13 mutations, seven in the spike protein. An eighth mutation at the midpoint of the immature spike protein, also found in the New York variants, can increase the virus’s contagiousness.
“The mutations in the B.1.617 have been studied independently, but not in combination,” said virologist Benjamin Pinsky. “What’s important … there’s a lot of mutations coming up in the spike protein.”
Which is common in viruses. Grace Roberts, a virologist at Queen’s University Belfast, said, “That’s something that occurs quite a lot in viruses. Surface proteins evolve more rapidly, especially with a new virus, [as] it wants to evolve to bind cells better.”
Ugur Sahin, chief executive officer of BioNTech, which developed the first COVID-19 vaccine with Pfizer, told CNBC yesterday that he is “confident” the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is effective against the Indian variant. It has been tested against similar “double mutants.” Unfortunately, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is not yet available in India.
Sahin said, “We are evaluating [the strain] … and the data will be available in the coming weeks. However, we had similar double mutants in our prior testing, and we are confident based on the data we had in the past that we might see a similar fashion of neutralization of this virus. But we will only know it if we have the data in our hands.”
Studies are still being run testing the existing vaccines against various other strains, and for the most part, are effective against them, although typically not quite as effective as they are against the original wildtype Wuhan strain.
Many vaccine manufacturers and public health officials suspect that a booster shot of the vaccines will need to be given to protect against variants as the original vaccine protection fades. However, that hasn’t been determined yet, though research teams are working on it.
“If we provide a boost we could really amplify the antibody response even above the levels that we had at the beginning and that could give us real comfort for protection for at least 12 months, maybe 18 months,” Sahin said.
Another study out of India, yet to be peer-reviewed, found that the existing vaccines should be effective against the Indian variant, not just the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. In the context of the Indian outbreak, it appears that the vaccine Covaxin, most commonly used in India, is effective against the double mutant variant.
There are two vaccines currently available in India: Bharat Biotech‘s Covaxin and the Serum Institiute-AstraZeneca-Oxford Covishield vaccine. Others are expected to be available there soon, such as Russia’s Sputnik V.
