‘We underestimated Covid-19″ – UKZN Researchers

RESEARCHERS from the University of KwaZulu-Natal said they underestimated the virus’s ability to mutate as they discovered a new, more dangerous variant of it.

Researchers found that a new variant of the Covid-19 virus, called 501Y.V2, can escape antibodies generated from previous infection. 

This means that antibodies from people who were infected with previous variants may not work well against 501Y.V2.

This was according to research led by Dr Alex Sigal from the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) and Prof Tulio de Oliveira and Dr Richard Lessells from the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) at UKZN which was published last week.

Using live virus outgrown from Covid-19 patients, the research team tested blood plasma, which contained antibodies from people who had recovered from Covid-19, against the new variant. 

They compared how much plasma was needed to neutralize, or make ineffective, the 501Y.V2 variant. 

They discovered that the antibodies of patients infected in the first wave in South Africa are much less able to neutralize 501Y.V2 relative to previous lineages of Covid-19 in South Africa.

Sigal said the virus’s ability to mutate may have been underestimated. “Compared to first-wave variants, we needed about a 6 to 200-fold higher plasma concentration to neutralize 501Y.V2 in a lab setting. This suggests that the mutations in the new variant may have caused the virus to lose a great deal of sensitivity to previous antibody immunity,” said Sigal.

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De Oliveira said their work reveals a new insight into the key mutations that are found in the 501Y.V2. 

“These results with the live virus add to the growing body of evidence that the 484K mutation is a key mutation that allows the virus to escape neutralization. It is the first time, to the best of my knowledge, that this is shown in a live 501Y.V2 virus,” he said.

While the authors say the data is a cause for concern, they have also emphasised that more work needs to be done before they can say what this means for people’s immunity against 501Y.V2, as well as the implications for vaccines designed for the earlier variants.

Vaccination is still absolutely recommended and is the only long-term solution to this infection said the researchers.

This week, Moderna announced that its vaccine was effective against 501Y.V2 but as a precaution will be developing a new form that would act as a booster against this variant.

Caxton Local Media Covid-19 reporting

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