Don’t worry about mutated strains of the coronavirus, experts say — the leading vaccine candidates should protect you against every version of the virus …
Don’t worry about mutated strains of the coronavirus, experts say — the leading vaccine candidates should protect you against every version of the virus they’ve seen. Moderna and Pfizer each announced this month that their coronavirus vaccines prevent COVID-19 — the former’s is 94.5% effective, while the latter’s is 90%. Both companies hope to get approval from the FDA in the coming weeks. Genetic evidence about the virus so far suggests that these vaccine candidates — and others in the race — are unlikely to need much tweaking in the future. That’s because the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, mutates slowly — its genome remains relatively stable over time. So any vaccine developed to target the original virus should work in the long-run against different versions that arise as it subtly evolves over time. « All SARS-CoV-2 to date are very genetically similar, » Lucy van Dorp, a researcher at University College London’s Genetics Institute, told Business Insider. « While most vaccines were designed with the original Wuhan reference genome as a target, I would be surprised if there would be big differences in efficacy against the major SARS-CoV-2 lineages at this stage. »The coronavirus mutates far more slowly than the flu A technician scans test tubes containing live samples of the coronavirus in the Robert Ballanger hospital in Aulnay-sous-Bois, near Paris, France, April 30, 2020. Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters All viruses accumulate genetic errors over time as they replicate. Some of these mutations can affect how well they infect hosts or how virulent they are. But the speed at which a virus mutates matters. The flu virus, for instance, mutates relatively quickly, which is why scientists create a new vaccine each year to keep up. But according to Emma Hodcroft, a geneticist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, there are only 20 to 25 differences between all existing versions of the coronavirus — across a genetic sequence of 30,000 building blocks.
