New coronavirus variants could cause more reinfections, require updated vaccines - Science Magazine

Relatives attend a COVID-19 victim’s burial in Manaus, Brazil, on 13 January.

When the number of COVID-19 cases began to rise again in Manaus, Brazil, in December 2020, Nuno Faria was stunned.

The virus should be done with Manaus.

Emerging variants of the coronavirus have been in the news ever since scientists raised the alarm over B.1.1.7, a SARS-CoV-2 variant that first caught scientists’ attention in England in December and that is more transmissible than previously circulating viruses.

Such “immune escapes” could mean more people who have had COVID-19 remain susceptible to reinfection, and that proven vaccines may, at some point, need an update.

WHO also convened its COVID-19 Emergency Committee on 14 January to discuss the impact of the new variants and the travel restrictions that many countries are imposing to contain them.

The more transmissible variant, B.1.1.7, is already spreading rapidly in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark, and probably in many other countries.

Like B.1.1.7, the variant identified in Manaus is already on the move.

“It’s too easy to just lay the blame on the variants and say it’s the virus that did it,” he said.

Even if the variant plays a crucial role it might be driving the boost because it is transmitted more easily, like B.1.1.7, not because it can evade the immune response.

Similarly, in a recent modeling study, researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine calculated that South Africa’s 501Y.V2 variant could be 50% more transmissible but no better at evading immunity, or just as transmissible as previous variants but able to evade immunity in one in five people previously infected.

The variants from the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Manaus all share a mutation named N501Y, for instance, or Nelly, as some researchers call it.

But the mutation, which affects the spike protein, also occurs in some variants that do not spread faster, suggesting N501Y does not operate alone, says Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research: “Nelly might be innocent, except maybe when she’s hanging with her bad friends.”.

So far, the virus does not appear to have become resistant to COVID-19 vaccines, says vaccinologist Philip Krause, who chairs a WHO working group on COVID-19 vaccines.

“The not-so-good news is that the rapid evolution of these variants suggests that if it is possible for the virus to evolve into a vaccine-resistant phenotype, this may happen sooner than we like,” he adds.

“We have to do everything we can now to vaccinate as many people as fast as possible, even if that means running the risk of selecting for some variants,” he says.

Several vaccines could be easily changed to reflect the latest changes, but regulators might balk at authorizing them without seeing updated safety and efficacy data, Krause says.

“To be clear: These are downstream considerations,” Krause says.