New Delhi: The US drugmaker Pfizer Thursday said that it’s Covid-19 vaccine “will continue to protect against” the B.1.617 variant, which was first identified in India.
The company said “the neutralisation against the B.1.617 variant is tested as part of Pfizer’s ongoing monitoring activities.”
“To date, we are encouraged by both the real-world data and laboratory studies of the vaccine and see no evidence that the virus or circulating variants of concern regularly escape protection,” Pfizer said.
Pfizer, which is in talks with the Indian government to bring its vaccines here, has reportedly told the Indian authorities that its shot has shown “high effectiveness” against the SARS-CoV-2 variant prevalent in India.
The American pharma giant, which was the first to apply for emergency use authorisation (EUA) for its vaccine in India, withdrew its application earlier this year, with sources attributing the decision to resistance of the Indian government to sign indemnity bonds. These are the legal bonds that protect the company from being sued in case the vaccine ends up causing any side-effects.
While there is no official confirmation from Pfizer on bringing its vaccine to India, V.K. Paul, member, NITI Ayog, told news agency PTI that “As soon as Pfizer indicated vaccine availability, the central government and the company are working together for the earliest possible import of the vaccine.”
The company did not respond to ThePrint’s mail on its stance on Paul’s comments.
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‘Strong support’ vaccine protects against variants
The US pharma giant also said it had recently conducted a study with the University of Texas to understand the neutralising activity of “BNT162b2-elicited serum against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern.” The preprint server, Research Square, has published a manuscript from the study.
BNT162b2 is an mRNA vaccine produced by the company.
In the study, Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch genetically engineered viruses with spike protein mutations found in the newly emerged B.1.617 or B.1.525 lineages.
The viruses were then tested against a panel of sera from participants in the previously reported Phase 3 trial who had been immunized with the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
“All the sera neutralized all the viruses tested,” the study said.
The manuscript from the study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, said: “Here we report that 20 BNT162b2 vaccine-elicited human sera neutralize engineered SARS-CoV-2 with a USA-WA1/2020 genetic background (a virus strain isolated in January 2020) and spike glycoproteins from the newly emerged B.1.617.1 (first identified in India) or B.1.525 (first identified in Nigeria) lineages.
“Geometric mean plaque reduction neutralization titers against the variant viruses, particularly the B.1.617.1 variant, are lower than the titer against USA-WA1/2020 virus, but all sera tested neutralize the variant viruses at titers of at least 40. The susceptibility of the newly emerged B.1.617.1 and B.1.525 variants to BNT162b2 vaccine-elicited neutralization supports mass immunization as a central strategy to end the COVID-19 pandemic across geographies.”
Pfizer also said that the recent real-world study in subjects who had received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine demonstrated an effectiveness of 75 per cent against any documented infection by the B.1.351 variant and 100 per cent against documented severe, critical or fatal disease caused by the variant B.1.351[1] (the variant first identified in South Africa), which shows a similar reduction of neutralisation titers as B.1.617.1.
“This indicates that reductions in neutralization like that observed for B.1.617.1 are unlikely to result in loss of vaccine efficacy. The neutralization data provide strong support that our vaccine will continue to protect against these variants,” it said.
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