Vaccination may be annual

The emergence of a more infectious mutation of coronavirus in Japan highlights the future reality of having to update anti-Covid-19 vaccines each year.

Professor Kurt Kraus. Photo: ODT files
Professor Kurt Kraus. Photo: ODT files
"It certainly looks like we are going to be living with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus [that causes Covid-19] for a long time," Dunedin biochemist Prof Kurt Krause said yesterday.

"It appears it’s not going to be a matter of getting one vaccination and you’re all set," Prof Krause, of the University of Otago biochemistry department, said.

"It seems more likely to be an annually renewable or similar vaccine," he said.

This would be analogous to the flu shot many people got each year, and it seemed the vaccine itself was likely to become multivalent — acting against several different strains of disease.

The annual flu shot was also typically directed at "three to four influenza strains," he said.

Otago virologist Dr Jemma Geoghegan was concerned about the Covid-19 mutation circulating in Japan as New Zealand athletes prepared to head there for the Olympics.

Japanese media reported about 70% of Covid patients at one Tokyo hospital were recently found to have the E484K mutation, nicknamed "Eek" by some scientists.

Japanese health authorities were concerned coronavirus variants were driving a nascent fourth wave in the pandemic only about 108 days before the Tokyo Olympics.

The variants appeared to be more infectious and might be resistant to vaccines, which were still not widely available in Japan.

A mutant Covid-19 variant first discovered in Britain had taken hold in the Osaka region, filling hospital beds with more serious cases than the original virus, a government adviser said.

Dr Geoghegan said the E484K mutation was an "escape mutation" that sometimes helped the virus slip past the body’s immune senses.

About 70% of coronavirus patients tested at a Tokyo hospital last month carried the E484K mutation, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported.

Dr Geoghegan said this was not itself a viral variation, but a mutation that had independently occurred within several different variants, having first been recognised in South African variant B1351.

Seventeen new cases of Covid-19 were reported in managed isolation yesterday.

The Ministry of Health said 13 of the 17 new cases tested positive in the first day after arrival.

The new cases were largely arriving from India, and 12 of the cases had come from there on flights via UAE. Two cases were from England via UAE, one from Philippines via Singapore and one on a direct flight from the United States.

john.gibb@odt.co.nz

 

Comments

"It certainly looks like we are going to be living with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus [that causes Covid-19] for a long time," oh goody, more disruption, more 'lockdowns', more restrictions, more fear for the foreseeable future, can't wait.

 

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