Fauci Says Vaccines Still Protect Against New Coronavirus Variants
Even though some of the variants impact antibody efficacy, the vaccines will still work thanks to the all-important “cushion effect”
Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images
The first press briefing from the Biden administration to include Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, received a lot of attention for the jokes, smiles, and pointed questions about the previous president.
However, the focus of Fauci’s comments on the pandemic itself was no laughing matter. The nation’s top infectious disease expert went into detail about the new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that are now circulating in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil. Of key importance was what the three variants could mean for the Covid-19 vaccines slowly being rolled out around the world.
Fauci opened by stating, “We need to understand that RNA viruses like coronaviruses mutate all the time. Most of the mutations don’t have any physiological relevance with regard to the function of the virus itself. However, every once in a while you get mutations, either singly or clustered in combinations, which do have an impact.”
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The big question, Fauci says, is whether the current variants are mutated in a way that would hamper the efficacy of the antibodies that the vaccines prompt the body to make in order to fight off the virus.
“Since monoclonal antibodies bind to a very specific part of the virus, when there’s a mutation there, it has a much greater chance of obliterating the efficacy of a monoclonal antibody,” he says.
The variant that originated in the U.K., which has been identified in more than 20 states in the U.S., does not appear to be mutated in a way that significantly impacts the antibodies. But, Fauci says, mutations on the similar variants found in South African and Brazil — which have not yet been found in the U.S. — could help the virus avoid the antibodies.
New preprint papers released this week indicate that the South African variant will cause a reduction in the efficacy of the vaccine-induced antibodies. But before you despair, that does not mean the vaccines will not be effective thanks to something called the “cushion effect.”
The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, which are each 95% effective at preventing Covid-19 in people who come into contact with the coronavirus, “suppress the virus at a dilution of let’s say 1 to 1,000, and the mutant influences it by bringing it down to maybe 1 to 800 or something like that,” Fauci says, using the numbers as rough illustrations. Crucially, he adds, “You’re still well above the line of not being effective. So there’s that cushion that even though it’s diminished somewhat, it still is effective.”
Should the virus mutate to the point that the vaccines are no longer effective, Fauci says that there are alternative plans in place to modify the vaccine if they have to. “That is not something that is a very onerous thing. We can do that given the platforms we have,” he says. “But right now, from the reports we have literally as of today, it appears that the vaccines will still be effective against them, with the caveat in mind that you want to pay close attention to it.”
