Preliminary work conducted by American scientists and released to the public on Monday reveals that the anti-Covid vaccines Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna are expected to remain effective against the Indian variant of the virus. This research was conducted in the laboratory by the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the NYU Langone Center.
Before publication in a scientific journal, they must receive the green light from peers.
Read alsoSanofi vaccine: what you need to know about the serum from the French laboratory
"We concluded that the antibodies produced by the vaccines are somewhat weakened against these variants, but not enough to suggest that this will have an effect on the protection conferred by the vaccines," told Agence France Presse, l lead author of the study, Nathaniel "Ned" Landau.
About 150 million Americans have received Pfizer or Moderna which are the two main vaccines used in the country.
People who have been vaccinated with one of these two sera have had their blood drawn by scientists.
The latter exposed the collected samples to a synthetic virus exhibiting the specific mutations of the B.1.617 and B.1.618 variants, both discovered for the first time in India.
The mixture was then put in contact with cells in the laboratory to find out how many would find themselves infected with these variants of Covid-19.
Decrease in the amount of antibodies
In the case of the B.1.617 variant, the researchers observed on average a fourfold decrease in the quantity of neutralizing antibodies.
These are Y-shaped proteins that are generated by the immune system to stop cells from entering the virus.
As for the variant B.1.618, the decrease was threefold.
Nathaniel Landau said that “in other words, some antibodies [don't] work against variants anymore, but you still have a lot of them that work”.
The lead author of this study added that "there are enough of them doing the job that we think vaccines will remain highly" effective.
"Our results give us confidence in the fact that current vaccines will confer protection against the variants identified so far", concludes the study by American scientists.
Studies carried out in the real world will however have to confirm these experiments carried out in the laboratory. The researchers do not rule out, however, that new, stronger variants will emerge in the future. They showed that the Indian variants had the ability to attach better to the ACE2 receptor, present on human cells and which the virus uses to force entry. Compared to the original strain of the virus, this ability could be related to its greater transmissibility.
