: B16172 variant: UK braces for more COVID cases despite vaccine effectiveness #IndiaNEWS #Coronavirus London: The B16172 variant is now dominant in the UK, and there have been fears that its sudden

B16172 variant: UK braces for more COVID cases despite vaccine effectiveness #IndiaNEWS #Coronavirus
London: The B16172 variant is now dominant in the UK, and there have been fears that its sudden rise could derail Britains exit from lockdown. Scientists including me have predicted previously that B16172 and other closely related variants could, because of the mutations they carry, be resistant to vaccines.
Public Health England (PHE) has therefore investigated the effectiveness of the leading vaccines against B16172. It has released a preprint an early piece of work yet to be reviewed by other scientists which suggests that the UKs vaccines are still effective against B16172, just not as effective as they are against B117, the variant that was previously dominant in the UK.
Does this mean we need not be worried? Unfortunately, probably not. Although PHEs general conclusion looks correct, when looking closely at its findings there are a number of things that suggest B16172 could nevertheless cause a spike in cases in Britain.
Effectiveness is variable
Firstly, dosing makes a big difference here. After two doses, PHE did indeed find that the Pfizer vaccine was highly effective against B117 (93%) and only somewhat less effective (88%) against B16172. The equivalent estimates for the AstraZeneca vaccine were 66% and 60%.
However, the overall number of COVID-19 cases in people who had received two doses of either vaccine was low, which makes these estimates somewhat uncertain. Because these results werent calculated using lots of data, we need to be cautious about giving these results too much credence.
But in people who had received only a single dose of either vaccine (at least three weeks previously), there was a bigger drop in performance. A single dose of either vaccine was 51% effective against B117 but only 34% effective against B16172 (with the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines being similar in this case).
These estimates are quite worrying, considering the UKs strategy is still to leave 12 weeks between the first and second doses. As B16172 becomes more prevalent, it may mean that were leaving millions of people with only 34% protection for a number of months. Increasing the gap between first and second doses (allowing more people to get first doses in the meantime) has been credited with preventing between 26 and 47 deaths per 100,000 population in the UK but these results may mean that having an extended gap is no longer the optimal strategy.
That said, this preprint only measured symptomatic illness and couldnt estimate the effectiveness of the vaccines at preventing severe disease caused by B16172. As COVID-19 vaccines generally appear rather more effective at preventing severe disease than mild or asymptomatic infections, continuing with the 12-week gap and getting first doses to a larger number of people could still be optimal for reducing hospitalisations and deaths.

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