(Staff article from the ABC NEWS AUSTRALIA on May 28, 2021.)
The new cases confirmed in Melbourne this week have
been identified as belonging to the B.1.617 lineage of the virus, colloquially
known as the "Indian variant". According to Professor Sutton, while
it usually took between six and seven days for a person to pass on COVID-19
after becoming infected, current cases were being transmitted "within a
day".
"Unless
something drastic happens, this will become increasingly uncontrollable,"
he warned. The variant has also worried
health officials elsewhere, with Public Health England, for example, declaring
B.1.617.2 to be a "variant of concern" on May 6, and the World Health
Organization (WHO) following suit on May 12.
Online, however, some social media users have suggested there is something amiss in the way the virus has spread from India to other countries. "Amazingly the Indian variant chose England rather than 8 countries on its way 4,688," one widely shared Facebook post reads. "Could have just gone 5 miles to Pakistan. Turn the News off you fools."
But the
inference that the B.1.617 variant has not spread to Pakistan or other
countries lying between India and the UK is incorrect. A recent WHO epidemiological
update put the number of countries which have recorded cases stemming from
B.1.617 at 44. According to fact checkers at UK-based Full Fact, the variant
has "been found across many continents, and many countries ‘between India
and the UK' ".
"Many other
countries have also sequenced cases of the B.1.617 variants, including
countries across Asia, South-East Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Europe,
Africa, North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean,"
Full Fact noted. "The UK, however, has sequenced the highest number of
cases."
Additionally, a
report published in Asia Times found that denials from Pakistani officials that
the variant had entered the country ignored the fact that the nation did not
have testing kits able to detect the variant.
"Research
institutions in Pakistan have detected some 'unknown variant' constituting 15
per cent of the country's total infections that may be the Indian variant, but
the lack of specialised testing kits has hampered the identification process,"
the report said.
Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are effective against Indian variant
With the World
Health Organization (WHO) now classifying the B.1.617 strain of COVID-19 a
'variant of concern', worries have surfaced regarding the efficacy of vaccines
currently being rolled out.
However, according to a study by U.S. scientists at
the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Langone Center, the Pfizer-BioNTech
and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines still remain highly effective against the deadly
'double mutant'.
The lab-based
study, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, posits that
the vaccines' antibodies are slightly weaker against variants, "but not
enough that we think it would have much of an effect on the protective ability of
the vaccines," said the study's senior author, Nathaniel "Ned"
Landau.
Researchers
looked at blood samples taken from people who already got a Pfizer or Moderna
jab in the U.S. Scientists exposed these blood samples to pseudovirus particles
(viruses produced in a lab for research purposes, or extracted from a natural
infection) that displayed the same characteristics of the Indian B.1.617 and
B.1.618 COVID-19 variants.
Following
exposure to pseudovirus particles, the team then introduced the mixture to
lab-grown cells in order to observe just how many samples would be infected by
the new variants. They were able to observe changes thanks to a luminous enzyme
called luciferase, which the pseudovirus particles contained. For context, fireflies
also use luciferase to light up at night.
The result?
Well, it would be naïve to assume that the Pfizer and Moderna blood samples
remained just as strong as they were before being introduced to the variants. For
the B.1.617 variant, the blood samples saw an almost four-fold decrease in the
amount of neutralizing antibodies, which are proteins created by the immune
system to prevent the invasion of pathogens. On the other hand, blood samples
exposed to the B.1.618 variant only experienced a three-fold decrease.
"In other
words, some of the antibodies now don't work anymore against the variants, but
you still have a lot of antibodies that do work against the variants,"
Landau said, pointing out that there are still enough neutralizing antibodies
left to fight pathogens.
Even when
compared to blood samples of people who recovered from un-mutated COVID-19,
numbers are still quite high. More studies still need to be conducted in order
to figure out if the vaccines will be effective in real-world scenarios.
Scientists also
need to consider the possibility that these vaccines might not be as effective
if and when newer variants come into play. That's because these (so far
non-existent) future variants might be a lot stronger and more resilient to
vaccines than the variants currently identified.
