Tag Archives: BioNTech SE

World

Serum Institute to prioritize India

Leave a comment

An AstraZeneca vaccine production line.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The world’s largest vaccine maker by volume, Serum Institute of India, has been told to meet domestic demand for Covid-19 shots first — before distributing them overseas.

The move implies that foreign governments could face order delays from the company as it places India’s needs ahead of others.

“Dear countries & governments, as you await #COVISHIELD supplies, I humbly request you to please be patient,” CEO Adar Poonawalla tweeted.

He said the Serum Institute of India (SII) “has been directed to prioritise the huge needs of India and along with that balance the needs of the rest of the world. We are trying our best.”

Poonawalla did not elaborate on who gave the directive.

SII declined to comment further about Poonawalla’s tweet when contacted by CNBC.

Covishield

Serum Institute is manufacturing the vaccine developed by British-Swedish pharma giant AstraZeneca and Oxford University, which is known locally as Covishield.

It is one of two vaccines that has received emergency approval to be used in India’s mass inoculation campaign which aims to vaccinate some 300 million people in the first phase, most of them frontline workers and those above 50 or in high-risk groups.

The other vaccine that received emergency approval was developed locally by India’s Bharat Biotech. It was created in collaboration with the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research and was granted emergency use authorization as clinical trials continue. 

Since kicking off the vaccination campaign in January, India has inoculated more than 10.8 million people as of Feb. 20, according to the government. It is expected to ramp up the number of daily vaccinations in the coming months.

An army health worker prepares a dose of Covishield, AstraZeneca/Oxford’s Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine made by India’s Serum Institute, at an army hospital in Colombo on January 29, 2021.

ishara S. Kodikara | AFP | Getty Images

Covishield was also granted emergency use listing by the World Health Organization (WHO) this month, allowing it to be supplied to low and middle-income countries around the world.

AstraZeneca said it hopes more than 300 million doses will be made available to 145 countries in the first half of 2021 through Covax, a global vaccination initiative led by WHO and others.

Covishield is less expensive compared to some of the other vaccines being used — such as the ones from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. It also doesn’t need to be stored in ultra-low temperatures, which makes it suitable for use in many developing countries that lack necessary storage infrastructure.

Growing demand



Read original article here

Health

Pfizer says South African variant could significantly reduce vaccine protection

Leave a comment

A vaccination tray of Pfizer BioNtech vaccines.

Matthias Bein | picture alliance | Getty Images

A laboratory study suggests that the South African variant of the coronavirus may reduce antibody protection from the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by two-thirds, and it is not clear if the shot will be effective against the mutation, the companies said on Wednesday.

The study found the vaccine was still able to neutralize the virus and there is not yet evidence from trials in people that the variant reduces vaccine protection, the companies said.

Still, they are making investments and talking to regulators about developing an updated version of their mRNA vaccine or a booster shot, if needed.

For the study, scientists from the companies and the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) developed an engineered virus that contained the same mutations carried on the spike portion of the highly contagious coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa, known as B.1.351. The spike, used by the virus to enter human cells, is the primary target of many Covid-19 vaccines.

Researchers tested the engineered virus against blood taken from people who had been given the vaccine, and found a two-thirds reduction in the level of neutralizing antibodies compared with its effect on the most common version of the virus prevalent in U.S. trials.

Their findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Because there is no established benchmark yet to determine what level of antibodies are needed to protect against the virus, it is unclear whether that two-thirds reduction will render the vaccine ineffective against the variant spreading around the world.

However, UTMB professor and study co-author Pei-Yong Shi said he believes the Pfizer vaccine will likely be protective against the variant.

“We don’t know what the minimum neutralizing number is. We don’t have that cutoff line,” he said, adding that he suspects the immune response observed is likely to be significantly above where it needs to be to provide protection.

That is because in clinical trials, both the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and a similar shot from Moderna Inc conferred some protection after a single dose with an antibody response lower than the reduced levels caused by the South African variant in the laboratory study.

Even if the concerning variant significantly reduces effectiveness, the vaccine should still help protect against severe disease and death, he noted. Health experts have said that is the most important factor in keeping stretched healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed.

More work is needed to understand whether the vaccine works against the South African variant, Shi said, including clinical trials and the development of correlates of protection – the benchmarks to determine what antibody levels are protective.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they were doing similar lab work to understand whether their vaccine is effective against another variant first found in Brazil.

Moderna published a correspondence in NEJM on Wednesday with similar data previously disclosed elsewhere that showed a sixfold drop antibody levels versus the South African variant.

Moderna also said the actual efficacy of its vaccine against the South African variant is yet to be determined. The company has previously said it believes the vaccine will work against the variant.

Read original article here

World

India could play an important role in producing vaccines

Leave a comment

A medic holds Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin vials during the countrywide inoculation drive, in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021.

Vishal Bhatnagar | NurPhoto | Getty Images

India could become the world’s second largest Covid vaccine maker, and analysts say the country has the capacity to produce for both its own population and other developing countries.

Most of the world’s vaccines have historically come from India. Even before Covid-19, the South Asian country produced up to about 60% of the world’s vaccines — and can do so at a relatively low cost.

“India has been a manufacturing hub for vaccines … even before the pandemic, and should therefore be a strategic partner in the global inoculation against COVID-19,” JPMorgan analysts wrote in a report last month.

Consulting firm Deloitte predicts that India will be second only to the U.S. in terms of coronavirus vaccine production this year. PS Easwaran, a partner at Deloitte India, said more than 3.5 billion Covid vaccines could be made in the country in 2021, compared to around 4 billion in the U.S.

Furthermore, companies in India are currently scaling up production to meet demand.

“We are expanding our annualized capacities to deliver 700 million doses of our intramuscular COVAXIN,” said Indian firm Bharat Biotech, which developed a Covid vaccine together with the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research.

Covaxin has been approved for emergency use in India, but has been mired in controversy due to criticism that there was a lack of transparency in its approval, and also because it hasn’t published enough efficacy data.

India vaccines suitable for developing world

Another vaccine — known as Covishield in India and co-developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford — has also been granted emergency approval in India. It is being produced locally by the Serum Institute of India (SII).

According to Reuters, SII makes around 50 million doses of Covishield every month, and plans to increase production to 100 million doses a month by March.

Other Indian companies have agreed to produce vaccines for developers such as the Russian Direct Investment Fund and U.S. firm Johnson & Johnson. To be clear, these vaccine candidates have not been approved for use yet.

“Even without successful vaccine development from their own pipelines, available capacity provides opportunity to partner as contract manufacturers with approved vaccine developers to meet supply needs particularly for India and other [emerging markets],” the JPMorgan report said.

With a proven track record on the scale at which vaccines are produced, India should be able ramp up production to meet international demand as well.

Nissy Solomon

Centre for Public Policy Research

India’s vaccines will likely be more suitable for developing countries, said K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India.

Some of the leading vaccines right now, such as the ones from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, make use of messenger RNA technology (mRNA) which uses genetic material to trigger the body’s own infection-fighting process.

Those vaccines require “stringent cold chain requirements” that will be difficult, or even “out of the realm of possibility,” for most health systems, Reddy said.

Vaccines made in India are easier to transport and cheaper, putting the country in a better position than the U.S. and Europe when it comes to meeting demand in the developing world, he added.

India’s ‘proven record’

India’s huge production capacity also gives analysts confidence that the country can provide vaccines to other nations.

New Delhi has pledged to send vaccines to its neighboring countries, and has already supplied 15.6 million doses to 17 countries, according to Reuters.

“India’s manufacturing capabilities are sufficient to meet domestic demand,” said Nissy Solomon, a senior research associate at Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR).

“With a proven track record on the scale at which vaccines are produced, India should be able ramp up production to meet international demand as well,” she told CNBC.

Solomon added that the country monitors domestic needs before making decisions on exports.

Bharat Biotech, for its part, said it is “fully prepared to meet the needs of India and global public health.”

Challenge of storing, distributing vaccines

However, there will be challenges as the country seeks to meet the vaccine demand in India and beyond.

Jefferies equity analyst, Abhishek Sharma, wrote in a note that the rollout of vaccines in India has been slow. Even under the assumption that the speed of vaccinations will increase, Sharma estimates that only 22% of India’s 1.38 billion population can be vaccinated in a year.

That’s roughly the number of people India wants to inoculate by July or August.

“The supply of vaccines is not as much a problem as that of storage, distribution and vaccine uptake,” said CPPR’s Solomon.

“India lacks the capacity to store and distribute to the masses at a scale as big as this,” she said, adding that the country should “strategically” choose vaccines that do not have to be stored at extreme temperatures.

I would say that [these challenges are] more like speed breakers which will slow down the … program, rather than actual roadblocks which require the program to stop.

K Srinath Reddy

Public Health Foundation of India

The vaccines that India currently manufactures require normal refrigeration, but those produced by Pfizer-BioNTech need to be kept in extremely cold temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit), while those by Moderna have to be stored at minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit).

The “real challenge” is in the sheer number of people who need to be vaccinated, said Reddy from the Public Health Foundation of India.

“This is the first time that an adult immunization program is being undertaken at such an unprecedented scale,” he told CNBC.

He said immunization programs typically focus on vaccinating children and mothers, and logistics network may not be prepared to handle vaccines for entire populations.

Reddy suggested that existing cold chain for food products could be used for vaccines, and was hopeful that this problem could be resolved.

“I would say that [these challenges are] more like speed breakers which will slow down the … program, rather than actual roadblocks which require the program to stop,” he said.

Read original article here

Business

How CVS and other retailers will dole out any surplus Covid vaccine doses

Leave a comment

A healthcare worker wearing a protective mask fills a syringe with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a large scale vaccination site in Sacramento, California, Feb. 4, 2021.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

As Covid-19 vaccination efforts get underway at major retailers and pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens, what to do with excess vaccine becomes a bigger question.

Both versions of the vaccine need to be stored at very low temperatures. After thawing, the vaccine must be administered within hours. In addition, vaccine vials contain multiple doses.

Companies told The Wall Street Journal that they are planning to use waitlists and will consider vaccinating employees who are eligible when excess supplies are available. The goal is to avoid wasting any doses, which continue to be in short supply.

Starting Thursday, vaccine doses are being sent to thousands of pharmacies and grocery stores such as CVS and Walmart in the U.S. This move will start with about 6,500 retail locations and help accelerate the rollout, ensuring that more Americans will be protected from Covid-19.

The companies are scheduling appointments based on the amount of vaccine they receive at each location, but they could find themselves with surplus vaccine if customers don’t show up for an appointment or if a vaccine vial contains more vaccine than anticipated.

Currently only two vaccines, one from Pfizer-BioNTech and another from Moderna, have received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. Both types require two doses of the shot to be effective.

The retailers are having to navigate varying state and local rules on eligibility requirements as they manage waitlists and determine what to do with any excess doses. In some states, retail workers qualify to receive the vaccine, while in other states they are not considered a high priority group unless they are above a certain age or have a specific medical condition.

A Walmart spokeswoman told the paper that the retailer has approached shoppers or workers who qualify under a state’s guidelines with an opportunity to be vaccinated if there is surplus supply.

Walmart worked with state health departments on protocols to avoid waste, a Walmart spokesperson told CNBC. These protocols allow excess opened and available doses to be administered to individuals, including employees, who fall under eligible groups in order of priority.

A Walgreens spokesperson told CNBC that they will consider their employees for the remaining doses and will communicate with state and local jurisdictions for doses beyond that.

Meanwhile, pharmacists at CVS will keep a list of qualified patients by state and will use that to determine who receives leftover doses of the vaccine, senior vice president of CVS Health Chris Cox told CNBC.

Read the full story in The Wall Street Journal.

Read original article here

Business

AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine Effective Against U.K. Variant in Trial

Leave a comment

LONDON—A Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and

AstraZeneca

PLC is effective against a variant of coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in the U.S. and around the world, according to a new study, a reassuring sign for governments banking on mass vaccination to bring the pandemic to an end.

The preliminary findings, published in a study online Friday that hasn’t yet been formally reviewed by other scientists, follow similarly positive results from other manufacturers.

Preliminary studies from

Pfizer Inc.

and

Moderna Inc.

found their Covid-19 shots continued to offer protection against new virus variants that have contributed to a fresh surge in cases in the U.K., Europe, South Africa and elsewhere.

Vaccine makers are nevertheless readying new shots that zero in on the new variants more precisely, underlining how mutations in the virus risk morphing the year-old pandemic into a long-running cat-and-mouse game between scientists and a shifting enemy. The virus behind Covid-19 has so far been linked to almost 2.3 million deaths worldwide and more than 100 million cases.

The study published Friday looked at the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness against a new variant of coronavirus first identified in the U.K. last year.

As new coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand how dangerous they could be. WSJ explains. Illustration: Alex Kuzoian/WSJ

The variant has now displaced older strains to become the dominant version of the coronavirus in Britain and is spreading in many other countries, including the U.S., where public-health officials have said it could become the dominant version of the virus.

Preliminary estimates suggest the variant from the U.K. is 50%–70% more transmissible than earlier versions of the virus. U.K. scientists said recently that early data suggested it could also be deadlier.

Researchers examined blood samples from around 256 participants in an ongoing clinical trial of the vaccine in the U.K. who tested positive for Covid-19.

Genetic sequencing allowed them to identify which participants were infected with the new variant and which had an older version. A little under a third had the new variant.

By testing antibody levels and other markers of immune system activity against the virus, the researchers found the vaccine triggered an effective immune response against the new variant in 75% of cases that showed symptoms of infection, and in around two-thirds of cases if those that didn’t show symptoms were also included.

The U.K. Coronavirus Variant

The small-scale study showed the vaccine works slightly better against older, more established versions of the virus. For those with the older strain, the vaccine was effective in 84% of symptomatic cases and 81% of all cases.

The researchers reported sharply differing antibody responses among the two groups, saying certain types of antibodies induced by the vaccine were up to nine times less effective at neutralizing the new variant than the old. Overall protection was similar, however, suggesting other parts of the immune system are playing a key role.

Andrew Pollard,

director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, said it isn’t entirely clear which biological mechanisms are most important. It might be infection-fighting T-cells or other types of antibodies, he said.

“We don’t know the answer,” he said.

Almost 120 million doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide, according to figures compiled by the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data project. Roll-outs have been patchy, with some countries such as Israel and the U.K. moving rapidly to inoculate their most at-risk citizens and others, including in Europe, lagging behind due to supply and other issues. The U.S. has so far given at least one dose of vaccine to 35 million people, around 10% of its population.

Vaccine makers say the technology behind Covid-19 vaccines should allow them to swiftly retool their production lines to produce shots targeted more precisely at new and emerging variants.

Some studies have suggested a variant first identified in South Africa might be less susceptible to existing vaccines than the U.K. variant. Companies including Moderna, Pfizer and its partner

BioNTech

SE,

Johnson & Johnson

and

Novavax Inc.

are designing new vaccines to specifically target the South African variant.

Babak Javid,

associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, said small differences in how vaccines perform against new variants compared with established versions isn’t a major concern provided those vaccinated are protected against severe illness and hospitalization. That will be critical to determining when countries relax lockdowns and other public health restrictions, he said.

Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

Health

Dr. Fauci on why it’s important to wear a mask after getting your Covid vaccine

Leave a comment

Sergeant Jennifer Callender (L) of the Illinois Air National Guard administers a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine to Virginia Persha at a vaccination center established at the Triton College in River Grove, Illinois, on February 3, 2021.

Kamil Krzaczynski | AFP | Getty Images

The deployment of life-saving coronavirus vaccines brings hope that life will soon return to a time before the pandemic where we weren’t advised to wear a mask nearly everywhere we go.

But even if you’re one of the lucky few to have gotten a Covid-19 shot, it will be important to continue wearing a face covering until researchers can determine whether the vaccines prevent people from spreading the virus to others who aren’t vaccinated, White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday.

“Currently, we do not have enough data to be able to say with confidence that the vaccines can prevent transmission,” Fauci said in a tweet during an online Q&A session. “So even if vaccinated, you may still be able to spread the virus to vulnerable people.”

What the vaccines’ clinical trials have shown, however, is that the drugs are highly effective at preventing symptomatic infections in people who have been inoculated. Both Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s vaccines, the only two in the U.S. that have received emergency authorization so far, have proven to be roughly 95% effective at preventing symptomatic infection in people given two doses spread out weeks apart.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, a one-dose jab that has yet to be granted the same authorization from the federal government, reported on Friday that its vaccine was 66% effective overall in protecting against Covid-19 in clinical trials. While lower than the others, it’s still above the threshold the federal government set — roughly 50% — to be granted emergency authorization.

On top of that, the company’s drug was 85% effective in preventing people from becoming severely ill with Covid-19 four weeks after their shot. The vaccine from J&J could become available in March if it clears the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s standards for emergency use, Fauci said.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also urged people to accept whichever vaccine available to them once it’s their turn.

Researchers are currently collecting follow-up data from people who participated in clinical trials to determine whether the amount of virus they carry in their nose is reduced after vaccination, or if there’s “significantly fewer” cases where people don’t exhibit any symptoms over the course of their infection.

That would indicate “a decreased ability to transmit the virus following vaccination,” Fauci said.

Read more: As new Covid vaccines near U.S. debut, here’s what you need to know about the shots

Masks, combined with other measures like frequent hand washing and social distancing, have been a critical tool to suppress the spread of Covid-19, medical experts have maintained.

The virus spreads from person-to-person through respiratory droplets that travel through the air when someone talks, coughs, sneezes, sings, or shouts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Face coverings serve as a barrier that can prevent those droplets from spraying to others.

There’s now evidence that the masks could also give the wearer some protection from the virus, the CDC says, though how well it works likely depends on the type of mask.

It’s also important to remember that most Americans haven’t been vaccinated yet, said Dr. Joshua Barocas, a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. According to recent data from the CDC, just nearly 34 million doses of vaccine have been administered so far.

“We don’t know who’s unvaccinated. We don’t wear it like a badge on our coat. We don’t wear our immune function, we don’t show our risk factors on our shirts,” Barocas said during a call organized by the Infectious Diseases Society of America on Wednesday. “We need a continued multilayered approach.”

Read original article here

World

UK trial experiments with mixing Covid vaccines

Leave a comment

Empty vials of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine are seen at a first come first serve drive-thru vaccination site operated by the Lake County Health Department on January 28, 2021 in Groveland, Florida.

Paul Hennessy | NurPhoto | Getty Images

LONDON — A trial is being launched in the U.K. to explore whether using different Covid-19 vaccines for the first and second doses works in a bid to make nationwide vaccination programs more flexible.

The trial, being led by the University of Oxford and run by the National Immunisation Schedule Evaluation Consortium, will evaluate the feasibility of using a different vaccine for the initial “prime” vaccination to the follow-up “booster” vaccination. 

It is hoped the study will help policymakers understand whether mixing different Covid vaccines could be a viable route to increase the flexibility of vaccination programs and whether it could even provide better protection.

“If we do show that these vaccines can be used interchangeably in the same schedule this will greatly increase the flexibility of vaccine delivery, and could provide clues as to how to increase the breadth of protection against new virus strains,” Matthew Snape, chief investigator on the trial and associate professor in Paediatrics and Vaccinology at the University of Oxford, said on Thursday.

The trial, which is formally known as the “COVID-19 Heterologous Prime Boost study” but has been dubbed the “Com-Cov” study, will recruit over 800 volunteers aged 50 and above in England to evaluate the four different combinations of prime and booster vaccination.

It will trial a first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine followed by boosting with either the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or a further dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The research will also look at a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine followed by boosting with either the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, or a further dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. 

These will be evaluated at two different dosing schedules: at a four-week interval to give an early interim data readout, and at a 12-week interval. This latter dosing interval is the current U.K. vaccination policy: A delay in the second dose means more people can get their first vaccines sooner amid a tight supply of shots.

Although the policy has been seen to be controversial, with some experts worrying that it could make the vaccines in use in the U.K. less effective; so far only the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech candidates are in use, with the Moderna shot set to be added to the basket of vaccines in use later in spring.

However, the University of Oxford published a study on Wednesday in which it showed that a delay of 12 weeks between the first and second doses of the AstraZeneca jab increases the efficacy of the vaccine.

The researchers found that the shot was 76% effective at preventing symptomatic infection for three months after a single dose, and that the efficacy rate rose to 82.4% when there was at least a 12-week interval before the second dose. When the second dose was given less than six weeks after the first one, the efficacy rate was 54.9%.

How the Com-Cov study will work

In the latest “Com-Cov” study, researchers will collect blood samples from trial volunteers and will monitor the impact of different dosing regimens on participants’ immune responses, as well as looking for any additional adverse reactions to the new combinations of vaccines.

The study will last for 13 months and has been backed by £7 million ($9.5 million) of government funding from the Vaccines Taskforce, which was set up by the U.K. last April to co-ordinate efforts to research and produce a coronavirus vaccine.

Professor Snape said the study was “tremendously exciting,” before adding that “it will provide information vital to the rollout of vaccines in the U.K. and globally.”

Richer countries are scrambling to vaccinate as many people as possible as national lockdowns, aimed to limit the spread of infections and prevent hospitals from being overrun, damage economies.

The U.K. has been hit hard by the pandemic and has seen cases surge in the winter, aided by a more virulent variant of the virus that emerged in southeastern England that has now become a dominant strain in the country.

The U.K. has the fourth-highest number of cases in the world at present, with over 3.8 million confirmed infections, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University, and has recorded 109,547 deaths.

The U.K. government was quick to pre-order coronavirus vaccines from a variety of makers early on last year, and to approve the vaccines currently in use. Its vaccination program has been widely praised for its agility and reach, and it’s on target to have vaccinated 15 million people in its top four priority groups, including health and care workers, the elderly and over-70s and anyone deemed extremely clinical vulnerable, by mid-February.

The latest government data, as of Wednesday, shows that just over 10 million people have had their first vaccine dose, and just under 500,000 have had a second dose, too. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is produced in Britain, makes up the bulk of the U.K.’s vaccination program.  

Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Senior Responsible Officer for the study, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, said that the research could even show that alternating vaccines could enhance the level of antibodies needed to fight potential Covid-19 infection.

“It is also even possible that by combining vaccines, the immune response could be enhanced giving even higher antibody levels that last longer; unless this is evaluated in a clinical trial we just won’t know. This study will give us greater insight into how we can use vaccines to stay on top of this nasty disease,” he said.

The U.K.’s vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi told the BBC on Thursday that, for now, the country’s vaccination program will continue as normal: “At the moment we will not change anything at all,” Zahawi told the ‘Today’ program.

“If you’ve had a Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for your first dose, you’ll have a Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for your second.  If you’ve had Oxford-AstraZeneca, you’ll have Oxford-AstraZeneca for your second dose.”

Read original article here

Health

Studies of South African Coronavirus Strain Raise Concerns About Immune Response

Leave a comment

JOHANNESBURG—Three new laboratory studies are raising concerns that the immune response triggered by a Covid-19 infection or vaccination may be less effective at protecting against the new strain of the coronavirus that first emerged in South Africa.

The findings come from experiments done in the laboratory and only look at certain elements of a body’s immune response. Still, they reinforce the possibility that vaccine makers and regulators will need to update Covid-19 vaccines as the virus evolves.

A fourth study, conducted by scientists at BioNTech SE and Pfizer Inc. and published by the companies, showed that their vaccine successfully neutralized a variant that was initially detected in the U.K. That study didn’t include the South African strain.

The U.K. variant has already spread to many other countries, including the U.S.

More than a year into the pandemic, the discovery of new variants that appear to have made the virus more contagious is forcing researchers to adapt their understanding of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. One concern, researchers said, is that the new strains are emerging in countries where a significant percentage of people have already built up an immune response to earlier variants after getting Covid-19.

Read original article here