Not exactly sure, but I think the original version of the covid vaccine has been good enough for the mutations and there has not been need for modified version.
it almost certainly is mutated at least some to further evade the vaccine. by the time the vaccine came out, COVID had already mutated enough to reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine. Which is why the original predictions that it would keep you from getting or spreading COVID turned out to be overstated. That's not to say it doesn't reduce the chances, but it seems likely as the virus continues to mutate, the effectiveness will reduce until it gets updated.
> Over time, as more mutations occur, the vaccine may need to be altered. This happens with seasonal flu, which mutates every year, and the vaccine is adjusted accordingly. The SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn’t mutate as quickly as the flu virus, and the vaccines that have so far proved effective in trials are types that can easily be tweaked if necessary.
I would assume any sort of attack, if it's not able to outright kill the virus, would accelerate mutation. The experts have conceded for a while now that the vaccine has been proven to reduce symptoms, but not necessarily reduce spread, so probably the right environment for mutation.
Yes, my comment may be on the optimistic side. Although I'm not sure if there are significant signs of mutations right now: AFAIK, the virus from 10 months ago is the pretty much the same virus the vaccine targets today.
Trying to understand something here: when COVID-19 first came out, there were reports that it would be difficult to produce vaccines for it because it is was a mRNA virus (as opposed to a DNA virus for which it is easier to produce a vaccine for.) One of the reasons I remember reading was that a vaccine could work for one mRNA variant, but not for the multiple variants that mRNA viruses are known to mutate into.
Is this what is happening? The current vaccines are effective against existing / known variants, but the new variations / mutations would require new vaccines?
"The current crop of Covid vaccines" all of which are engineered based on the original variant. Ignorance like this has contributed to the virus mutating, and obviously the newer variants have increased fitness against whatever immune response the original one provokes - otherwise it wouldn't exist.
All the vaccines work for variants - COVID is not actually that good at mutating, it's not the flu. Some work better than others, but there's no reason to skip one because it appears you can mix them with no side effects.
The UK government has stated that there is no evidence the vaccine will not be effective against this strain. And from the bmj:
The new variant has mutations to the spike protein that the three leading vaccines are targeting. However, vaccines produce antibodies against many regions in the spike protein, so it’s unlikely that a single change would make the vaccine less effective.
Over time, as more mutations occur, the vaccine may need to be altered. This happens with seasonal flu, which mutates every year, and the vaccine is adjusted accordingly. The SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn’t mutate as quickly as the flu virus, and the vaccines that have so far proved effective in trials are types that can easily be tweaked if necessary.
Peacock said, “With this variant there is no evidence that it will evade the vaccination or a human immune response. But if there is an instance of vaccine failure or reinfection then that case should be treated as high priority for genetic sequencing.”
I don't know, I just see the virus has evolved into a very mild variant that even triple-vaxed don't seem protected from, and that the original vaccine has been designed with a spike protein that has since greatly mutated.
It still allows the virus to replicate and mutate, potentially into a variant that is different enough that the vaccine no longer prevents people from dying.
The article that I saw today was contradicting itself. In one place it said that there are 3 mutations and that vaccine might not work on it, and in another place that it should.
My understanding is that at this point we don't know yet. The actual testing would probably require a vaccinated person to be exposed to that strain.
Yep. Spoke with someone who worked on the Moderna vaccine about this.
The short of it is, the window in which the virus can / has an opportunity to mutate is shortened by the vaccine. Thus, vaccinated individuals may be host to mutations if they catch COVID but given fewer “dice rolls” - if you want to call it that - would be similarly less likely to create an especially worse mutation.
Couple that with the reduction of spread given by vaccines, and the difference is staggering.
This paper is being wildly misinterpreted and cherry-picked by people who aren’t involved in the science, or qualified to consume it.
> It is absolutely clear at this point that these vaccines will not eradicate covid. [...]
> The 1918 flu pandemic ended without a vaccine. Covid will pass as well.
You're begging the question here. As best as we can tell, variants tend to come up when individual people mount a marginally effective immune response to the virus -- just enough to keep it in check but not enough to eradicate it. Effectively, they become a walking "gain of function" experiment.
Vaccines help at the outset by strengthening the immune response. They also help on a statistical basis by simply reducing the background rate of covid in a society. Given the development of new mutations with vaccine availability, we'd be likely to see as many or more mutations without widespread vaccination. If "covid will pass" without vaccination, then it will pass faster with, and the reverse implication is not necessarily true.
Remember, while the media often calls variants of concerns "vaccine escapes," the real effect is immune escape. If a new variant is more likely than average to cause a breakthrough case in a vaccinated person, it's also more likely than average to cause a reinfection in a recovered person.
If you want to be optimistic, then you can still hold out hope that new, more infectious variants may be less severe. The "human gain of function experiment" process for creating variants would select for both infectivity and non-severity. However, I do not have any data on the relative severity of B.1.1.529, and summer/early fall reporting on Delta suggested that it tended to cause somewhat more severe illness than Covid Classic.
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