After the emergence of a variant strain of the new coronavirus, a newly released experimental study reports that people who have been infected but have recovered from the disease may not be immune to the South African variant of the virus.
Novavax, a biotech pharmaceutical company, found that people who had previously been infected with the new coronavirus had the same severity of infection with the B.1.351 South African variant as those who had never been infected.
The report was sent to the New York Academy of Sciences earlier last week. Although the report is only a preliminary result and still needs to be further explored, it highlights the severity of the current virus attack and the difficulty of controlling the outbreak.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine has been significantly reduced in the face of the South African variant of the virus.
The vaccine, developed by British drugmaker AstraZeneca in collaboration with Oxford University, is approved for use in the European Union, Australia, Brazil and other countries. Last week, Oxford University’s latest study had pointed out that the power of this AstraZeneca vaccine is considerable, generally speaking, after vaccination, although the vaccinees themselves can obtain antibodies to avoid infection, but may still spread the virus to others, but for the AstraZeneca vaccine, but after the first dose of injection can block 2/3 of the virus infection
However, AstraZeneca announced preliminary data from a small clinical trial on Feb. 6 that the vaccine has limited efficacy in protecting against minor illnesses caused by the South African variant of the virus; given that most of the participants in the trial were young, healthy adults, the vaccine’s efficacy in protecting against serious illnesses and hospitalized cases cannot yet be confirmed.
Oxford University says it is working with AstraZeneca to optimize the response to the variola virus, which is necessary.
Just as many countries around the world are finally launching mass vaccination, scientists have found that the new coronavirus is continuing to genetically mutate, with more than 4,000 variant strains having emerged, including South African, British and Brazilian variants that are significantly more infectious. Moreover, these mutant strains are spreading rapidly.
For example, the Canadian province of British Columbia reported 28 cases of mutant strains in the province on February 5, doubling the 14 cases a week earlier, including 19 cases of the British strain and 9 cases of the South African strain. More worryingly, a large percentage of these cases either have no travel history or no source of infection can be found. Italy has also seen multiple cases of clusters of infection with the British variant of the virus.
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