A health care worker receives the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the United Memorial Medical Center on December 21, 2020, in Houston, Texas. (Getty Images/TNS.Go Nakamura) TNS
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Moderna’s vaccine, one of the two currently granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S., is effective against coronavirus (COVID-19) variants that have emerged in the United Kingdom and South Africa, but has shown a weaker response against the latter, the company said today.
Moderna said a study that analyzed blood samples from eight people who received two doses of its vaccine and two monkeys that were also immunized showed that “neutralizing antibody titers” — which disable the virus — were present at levels against the U.K. virus that were “generally consistent” with the vaccine’s effectiveness against prior variants of the coronavirus.
However, the study, which has not been peer-reviewed thus far, shows those same neutralizing elements were reduced “six-fold” against the strain that has taken hold in South Africa, the company said.
The vaccine created by Pfizer-BioNTech also showed a reduction in effectiveness against the South African variant, the New York Times reported.
While Moderna said the level of antibodies produced by the vaccine is still expected to be protective against the South African variant, the company announced it was developing an “emerging variant booster candidate” to use against that version of the virus.
“As we seek to defeat the COVID-19 virus, which has created a worldwide pandemic, we believe it is imperative to be proactive as the virus evolves,’’ said Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO. “We are encouraged by these new data, which reinforce our confidence that the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine should be protective against these newly detected variants.”
“Out of an abundance of caution and leveraging the flexibility of our mRNA platform, we are advancing an emerging variant booster candidate against the variant first identified in the Republic of South Africa into the clinic to determine if it will be more effective to boost titers against this and potentially future variants,” Bancel added.
Yesterday, on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said the strain that has become the dominant form of the virus in the U.K. has the potential to “cause more damage.”
“A little bit more concerning with the South African isolate, namely the mutant that is now prevalent in South Africa, particularly its negative impact on some of the monoclonal antibodies that have been given for treatment, that it can, in some respects, knock out their efficacy,” Fauci added.
Fauci suggested that the “best way to prevent the further evolution of these mutants is to vaccinate as many people as possible with the vaccines that we have currently available to us.”
