Source: Nature
Evidence is growing that some coronavirus variants could evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and previous infections. Researchers are trying to make sense of a tsunami of lab studies released this week that raise concerns about some emerging variants and mutations.
"Some of the data I've seen in the last 48 hours have really scared me," says Daniel Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, who worries that some of results could portend a reduction in the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
But the picture is murky, Altmann and other scientists emphasize. The studies — which examined the blood of small numbers of people who had recovered from COVID-19 or received a vaccine — probed only their antibodies' capacity to 'neutralize' variants in laboratory tests, and not the wider effects of other components of their immune response.
Neither do the studies indicate whether the changes in antibody activity make any difference to the real-world effectiveness of vaccines or the likelihood of reinfection. "Are these changes going to be important? I really don't know," says Paul Bieniasz, a virologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City, who co-led one of the studies.
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