Good news in the fight against Covid! According to the World Health Organization, vaccines currently used and injected as part of the coronavirus epidemic vaccination campaign are effective against "all COVID-19 virus variants". This is what WHO claimed this Thursday May 20, 2021. WHO yet called for prudence avoiding for instance international trips, "in the face of a continued threat and new uncertainty", WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge explained.
This March 26 already, a study in Nature, antibodies induced by vaccination do work against the virus variants – still debated a few months ago – making us fear of a longer pandemic, for lack of altered vaccines. A study has been published and completes others that gave positive results, like Pfizer, confirming the effectiveness of the vaccine on the varied Covid strains.
What was this new study about? Searchers from the Institut Pasteur have isolated the UK B117 variant, and the South African B1351 variant, and put them with antibodies to compare their reactions and sensitiveness with patients infected by classic coronavirus, as well as patients vaccinated. And results are quite encouraging: therefore, antibodies – whether induced by virus contamination of vaccine injection – are 95% effective on the UK variant.
As for the South African variant, yet, antibodies also induced by contamination or vaccination are less effective and require a six times greater concentration to overcome the strain. Yet, this is good news, while waiting for laboratories to come up with an effective vaccine against this mutation. Unless there is a universal vaccine to arrive soon, working against all variants and currently studied.
