What do virus mutations mean for the COVID-19 vaccine?

The first case of a more contagious COVID-19 variant was confirmed in Texas last week, raising questions about what the new strain means for vaccination efforts.

Health experts say the current coronavirus vaccines are likely to work against known mutations.

All viruses can mutate as they spread. When a virus enters the body, it makes copies of its genetic blueprint. But sometimes mistakes are made during the process, resulting in mutations.

Most mutations are harmless and have little to no effect on how a virus behaves.

The CDC is mainly monitoring two new variants of the virus — one that was first detected in the United Kingdom known as B.1.1.7, and one that was first detected in South Africa known as 501Y.V2.

The mutations were first detected between September and October, and both are thought to spread more easily than what has been circulating in the U.S.

There is no evidence to suggest the new strains cause more serious illnesses or an increased risk of death, according to the CDC.

As of the week of Jan. 5, the U.K. variant had been detected in 40 more countries, and the South African variant has been detected in six other countries, according to the World Health Organization.

The first case of the U.K. variant was confirmed in the U.S. on Dec. 29 in Colorado, and has since been reported in New York, Florida, California, Pennsylvania and Georgia. The South African variant had not been reported in the U.S.

The CDC said that it is also monitoring a strain that was identified in Nigeria but that there’s no evidence it spreads more easily or causes more serious illnesses.

Vaccines still likely to work

It’s still likely the current COVID-19 vaccines will work against the new variants, health experts say.

Pfizer and Moderna, the companies that produce the two COVID-19 vaccines that are available in the U.S., said last month that they were testing their vaccines against the U.K. strain.

Preliminary research on the Pfizer vaccine published Jan. 7 found that the vaccine appeared to be effective against the U.K. and the South African strains. Health experts say that though the research is promising, the study was still limited and more data is needed.

Vaccine manufacturers and researchers have prepared for new strains throughout the pandemic.

Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines are mRNA-type vaccines that target spike proteins on the outside of the virus that causes COVID-19. The vaccines teach the body to mount an immune response when it comes across those spike proteins.

The vaccine prepares a person’s body for immune responses that cover multiple sites on the virus, according Dr. Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, Business Insider reported.

“It’s predicted that some of the mutations that are present in this new variant will affect some of those sites,” Openshaw said, referring to the U.K. variant. “It doesn’t seem likely that it will affect all.”

Health experts say that it’s possible the new variants could make the vaccines less effective but that the strains are likely a long way from making any vaccine useless.

“There’s still many steps for the virus to overcome this barrier,” Vineet Menachery, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, told Vox. “We are not even close to that, in my opinion. The variants are kind of going down that road, but we’re not there yet.”

He said it’s not impossible for the virus to mutate past immunity provided by current vaccines, but that probably won’t happen for several years.

Health experts are less certain about how the South African variant will behave with current vaccines. But even if COVID-19 vaccines need to be changed, health experts say it would be a simple adjustment.

Because mRNA vaccines use genetic information to create immune responses, vaccine developers only need to edit the genetic codes to make changes, health experts say.

“The beauty of the messenger mRNA technology is we can directly start to engineer a vaccine that completely mimics this new mutation and we could manufacture a new vaccine within six weeks,” BioNTech’s Chief Executive Ugur Sahin told the Financial Times, Vox reported.

Since the current vaccines are already in circulation, manufacturers probably wouldn’t have to go back to square one to get a vaccine approved for a new strain, experts have said. The approval process could be similar to the flu vaccine, which is also adjusted each year.

For now, health experts say it’s important to continue following public health guidelines that have been stressed throughout the pandemic. While more contagious strains may not cause worse illness, a strain that causes more COVID-19 cases overall could easily overwhelm already stressed health care systems.

“The bottom line hasn’t changed: We need to suppress the amount of viral transmission as much as we can,” Stephen Goldstein, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Utah, told Vox. “Outbreaks grow exponentially and you’re not going to vaccinate at an exponential rate … But you can bring outbreaks down to a rate where they are not growing exponentially.”