Does the Coronavirus Mutation in Britain Render Vaccines Ineffective?
After Britain’s Prime Minister announced the spread of a much more contagious variant of coronavirus in the country, concerns have increased about negative effects on vaccine effectiveness. Several European experts have commented on this matter.
Yesterday, Boris Johnson, Britain’s Prime Minister, spoke about the discovery of a mutated strain of coronavirus in his country that has increased its transmissibility by 70 percent.
According to news agencies, the announcement has fueled concerns about vaccines becoming less effective, but experts believe this mutation likely cannot reduce vaccine efficacy. Richard Neher from the Center for Bioinformatics at the University of Basel in Switzerland says: “I currently see no reason for alarm.”
Andreas Bergthaler from the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna also does not consider the current course of coronavirus developments “very alarming.”
Experts consider mutation in the virus to be a natural phenomenon and add that currently no one knows whether the changes observed in coronavirus can actually significantly alter its characteristics or not.
Based on the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines, they emphasize that this vaccine simultaneously generates immune response against multiple features of this virus.
Richard Neher from the University of Basel says that changes in several characteristics of this virus will not prevent the immune system from being able to identify and recognize the disease agent. However, he also emphasizes that despite this, subsequent virus mutations should be monitored.
For the past several weeks, a strain of coronavirus has been prevalent in southeastern Britain that, based on initial observations, is more contagious than previous versions of the virus.
Neher says that the possibility of this version of coronavirus spreading faster is essentially logical, and if this proves true, restrictions need to be clearly increased to prevent further spread of virus infections.
Nevertheless, in his view, it is possible that the increase in cases of this type of virus may only be a consequence of an event that has led to this pandemic.
Source: DW
