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By Alexander Winning
JOHANNESBURG, March 3 (Reuters) - Research by South African
scientists suggests that antibodies triggered by exposure to the
country's dominant coronavirus variant can prevent infection by
other variants, the scientists said on Wednesday.
The findings in laboratory studies offer hope that COVID-19
vaccines based on the 501Y.V2 variant first identified late last
year could protect against multiple variants circulating in
different parts of the world.
The more contagious variant drove a second wave of
infections in South Africa that peaked in January and is
believed to have spread to many other countries in Africa and
other continents.
"We used plasma ... from people that were infected in this
latest wave with the 501Y.V2 and we used it against the
first-wave virus, ... what we found is that it could neutralise,
OK not as well as it could neutralise itself but it's not bad at
all," Alex Sigal from the Africa Health Research Institute told
a news conference.
Sigal said vaccines designed with the 501Y.V2 variant in
mind "might be cross-protective to other variants, ... this
gives you some idea how this problem of variants can be solved".
Penny Moore, a professor at the National Institute for
Communicable Diseases, said the antibody response from the
501Y.V2 variant was only reduced threefold against the
first-wave virus, whereas the response from the first-wave virus
was reduced nine-fold against 501Y.V2.
"It's not that the antibodies that are triggered by 501Y.V2
are somehow magical, there is a drop-off, ... but unlike the
antibodies triggered by the original variant they seem to
somehow have a little bit more breadth," she told the same
briefing.
Salim Abdool Karim, a top government adviser on COVID-19,
said major vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer,
AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson were already
making vaccines based on the 501Y.V2 variant. Moderna
had already adapted its shot and was putting it into human
studies, he added.
He predicted that by the end of 2021 most vaccine
manufacturers would have adapted their shots, "not because they
are specifically worrying about the virus coming from South
Africa ... but because key mutations in the 501Y.V2 are actually
also present in many other variants".
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said the research was
encouraging and that genomics surveillance had helped the
government respond to the pandemic.
South Africa has recorded by far the most COVID-19
infections and deaths on the African continent, at 1.5 million
cases and over 50,000 fatalities to date.
(Reporting by Alexander Winning;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
