Covid-19s so-called ‘Indian variant has a “modest” ability to “escape” the antibodies developed by vaccines, but it can, at best, cause moderate illness among those who have got the shots, scientists from India and the UK have found, establishing that “vaccination is still protective for the majority of people”.
COVID-19: B.1.617 can duck antibodies, but vaccine blunts sting, says Study
ByMalathy IyerMalathy Iyer / Updated: May 12, 2021, 10:19 IST
MUMBAI: Covid-19’s so-called ‘
Indian variant’ has a “modest” ability to “escape” the
antibodies developed by vaccines, but it can, at best, cause moderate illness among those who have got the shots, scientists from India and the UK have found, establishing that “vaccination is still protective for the majority of people”.
The B.1.617 mutant, first isolated in Vidarbha three months ago, is now detected across India and 40 other countries. It was initially called the ‘double mutant’ variant for possessing mutations E484Q and L452R that are known to evade the protective layer of antibodies caused by
MUMBAI: Covid-19’s so-called ‘Indian variant’ has a “modest” ability to “escape” the antibodies developed by vaccines, but it can, at best, cause moderate illness among those who have got the shots, scientists from India and the UK have found, establishing that “vaccination is still protective for the majority of people”.
The B.1.617 mutant, first isolated in Vidarbha three months ago, is now detected across India and 40 other countries. It was initially called the ‘double mutant’ variant for possessing mutations E484Q and L452R that are known to evade the protective layer of antibodies caused by vaccination. The B.1.617 was recently named a variant of concern because of its high transmissibility by WHO.
The paper, in pre-print stage, holds the B.1.617’s modest ability to dodge antibodies responsible for its high infectivity and transmissibility that fuelled the second wave in India.
“The data go some way in explaining the dominance of this variant in a partially immune population, but highlights that vaccination is still protective for the majority of people,” said Gupta Lab, the Twitter handle of Ravi Gupta from the University of Cambridge’s department of medicine and author of the new study.
Dr Anurag Agrawal, director of the Delhi-based Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology and a co-author of the paper, told TOI the most important point is that “vaccines protect against B.1.617”. “There is an immune escape, but not of a high degree,” he added. Late on Monday, another scientist, Vinod Scaria, from the institute tweeted B.1.617 is unlikely to be a major immune escape variant.
Virus variants causing breakthrough infections
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‘Small percentage of fully-vaccinated people may get infected but with mild symptoms’
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‘Small percentage of fully-vaccinated people may get infected but with mild symptoms’
The first study on the phenomenon of breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infections among healthcare workers in the State has found that these individuals were infected by virus variant B.1.1.7 (which is a Variant of Concern) and variants with E484K and S477N mutations in spike protein, which are associated with immune escape.
The genomic analysis study of virus samples collected from healthcare workers who developed infection two weeks after they had received the second dose of vaccine was done by IGIB, New Delhi, in collaboration with the Government Medical Colleges at Kozhikode, Ernakulam and Idukki.