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The British variant of the coronavirus is not capable of affecting people who have already had a Covid infection or have received the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
This is confirmed by a new research carried out by scientists from the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute, published in the
bioRxiv
repository
.
The antibodies that the body generates both after having passed the disease and if it receives the vaccine can neutralize the English variant, called
B.1.1.7
.
This variant, along with other new strains of SARS-CoV-2, worries specialists, who closely follow its evolution due to its greater transmission capacity.
The possibility that the mutations of this strain 'facilitate' the virus to escape its defenses is another possibility that scientists from all over the world are investigating right now.
However, according to the results of this work, the immune system would perfectly recognize and stop the English variant whether it had previously been in contact with other variants of the virus or if it had received the immunization developed by Pfizer / BioNTech.
The results of the Catalan center promoted by la Caixa suggest, in fact, that the antibodies generated after an infection improve over time.
According to their data, people who had the disease during the first wave and, therefore, were in contact with the original variant of the virus have a greater ability to block the described variant six months after infection.
To reach these conclusions, the scientists first developed viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 produced in the laboratory.
Some of these pseudoviruses had a genome 'copied' from the original virus, while others contained mutations that resembled known variants, such as the British or
D614G
, which appeared during the first wave.
After verifying the infectivity of these viruses, the researchers used plasma from, on the one hand, 53 people who had passed the infection, and, on the other, from 32 people who had received both doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
Later, strong> evaluated the protective capacity of their antibodies.
The results showed that infected people are able to block very well and in a very similar way both the original variant and the one described in England.
Moreover, according to their data, the response of these individuals was more powerful six months after infection than at the beginning, which, according to the researchers, indicates that in these cases the antibodies refine over time and improve their blocking capacity. .
In the case of people who had received both doses of the vaccine (previously they had not been infected), the researchers found that their antibodies were twice less efficient in blocking the British variant compared to the original.
In any case, recall the authors of the work in a statement,
"in all cases the levels of antibodies" were "high enough to prevent infection by both variants
.
"
"The results show us that the majority of people have protection against both variants," said Edwards Pradenas, a predoctoral researcher at IrsiCaixa and a member of the team that carried out this trial, in the aforementioned statement.
But despite this finding, "we do not know how long this
protection, and there may be people who lose the antibodies ", he remarked. Due to this reality" it
is necessary to continue wearing a mask
, maintaining social distance and following prevention measures until there is a very low incidence of new infections and a very high percentage of vaccinated population ".
"It is important to follow up the people who have passed the infection and those who have been vaccinated to know how long their immunity lasts and also if it protects them from the new variants that appear. This is a very large volume of work in the laboratory, but we believe that it is essential and we are dedicating a lot of effort ", said, regarding the investigation, Bonaventura Clotet, director of IrsiCaixa.
According to the entity, the team is already working with other variants of interest, such as the Brazilian or the South African.
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