OLD VIRUS, NEW TRICKS — Moderna today said laboratory tests show its vaccine still offers protection against the new variants of the-no-longer-all-that-novel coronavirus. But Moderna also said its vaccine is more effective against the variant first found in the U.K. than the one in South Africa. The Biden administration is collaborating with the company to develop booster shots — one specifically aimed at the variant in South Africa. The news follows a study from researchers in South Africa who took blood samples from 44 people who had recovered from Covid. Half of the people didn't have the necessary antibodies to protect against the new strain, while the other half had reduced antibody levels. Lead researcher Penny Moore, a virologist at South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases, talked with Nightly's Myah Ward about what researchers know about the variants so far. This conversation has been edited. Can you explain why it appears that this particular mutation may allow the virus to evade antibody treatments and vaccines? In a very simple sense, it's changing its coat at exactly the spot where the antibodies prefer to bind to the virus. But what's happened is that the amino acid that sits at that location has completely changed its charge. It's gone from being a negatively charged thing to being a positively charged thing. And essentially, that switch is enough to deflect antibodies that are trying to bind to it. Are researchers concerned they might see the same effects with the variant in Brazil? Potentially, because it shares one of the mutations that we, and many others, have shown is problematic in the South African variant. The fact that it's popping up independently in two different lineages is also an indication that it's an efficient way for the virus to escape. Today the variant first detected in Brazil was found in Minnesota. And Biden is said to be banning travel from South Africa. Do you think that variant is already in the U.S., too? I'd be astonished if it's not. I would bet my children's education on the fact that there are variants circulating in the U.S. With the number of infections going on constantly in the U.S., it is inevitable that there are variants emerging in the U.S. and that just haven't been picked up yet. What do your study results mean for the vaccine — booster shots? An entirely new vaccine? Potentially all of the above. Obviously, that makes rolling out vaccines in countries such as mine very difficult — where we already have an infrastructural problem in rolling out a vaccine. Three shots, four shots, that makes life very, very difficult, particularly for less resourced countries. But the first thing we need to do is confirm that it does result in reduced vaccine efficacy. They're lab studies, and they come with big caveats. We don't know how well that translates in real life — to real people being exposed. Unfortunately, we don't know how much antibody is enough to protect. So we don't know if the losses that we're seeing will really translate into reduced vaccine efficacy. When will we know whether or not these findings translate in real life, as you put it? It should be a matter of weeks, because many of these vaccines trials are coming to an end now. We'll be able to take the viruses that infected people who had the vaccine and sequence them and see whether they were the old variant or the new variant. And more simply, we'll be able to see whether the vaccines worked in areas where the new variant is increasingly emerging. There are a lot of unknowns with the mutations. Why is it still important to get the vaccine? If I was offered a vaccine, now in South Africa where the new variant is coming to dominate, I would take the vaccine, no doubt about it. Whichever vaccine I could get, I would take it. We do not know yet whether we've lost efficacy or even just reduced efficacy. And the way we stop more variants from coming out is by stopping the number of infections that we have. So even if we vaccinate with a vaccine that is less than perfect, as long as we start bringing down the numbers, then we can get this virus under control.
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