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Vaccine Effectiveness In opposition to An infection Might Wane, C.D.C. Research Discover

Vaccine Effectiveness Against Infection May Wane, C.D.C. Studies Find

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published three studies on Wednesday that federal officials said provided evidence that booster shots of the Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines would be needed in the coming months.

However, some experts said the new research did not support the decision to recommend a booster dose to all Americans.

Taken together, the studies show that while the vaccines are still highly effective against hospital admissions and deaths, their bulwark against infection with the virus has weakened in recent months.

The finding is consistent with early data from seven states compiled this week by the New York Times, suggesting an increase in breakthrough infections and a smaller increase in hospital admissions among vaccinated people as the Delta variant spread in July.

The decline in effectiveness against infections may be due to declining vaccine immunity, failure of precautionary measures like wearing masks, or the rise of the highly contagious Delta variant, experts said – or a combination of all three.

“We are concerned that this pattern of decline that we are seeing will continue in the coming months, which could result in decreased protection from serious illness, hospitalization and death,” said Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, at a press conference at the White House on Wednesday.

Citing the data, federal health officials outlined a plan for Americans who received the two vaccines to receive a booster dose eight months after receiving their second dose starting September 20.

People who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may also need additional doses. That vaccine wasn’t launched until March 2021, however, and a plan to deploy boosters will be drawn up after reviewing new data expected over the next few weeks, officials said.

Some scholars were skeptical of the government’s new initiative.

“These data support the administration of additional doses of the vaccine to severely immunocompromised individuals and nursing home residents, not the general public,” said Dr. Celine Gounder, Infectious Disease Specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center and former advisor to the administration for the pandemic.

Boosters would only be justified if the vaccines didn’t prevent hospital stays with Covid-19, she said.

“Feeling sick like a dog and staying in bed but not lying in hospital with severe Covid is not reason enough,” said Dr. Gounder. “We will be better protected by vaccinating the unvaccinated here and around the world.”

It’s unclear whether a third dose would help people who didn’t evoke a robust immune response to the first two doses, said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

And the recommendation for boosters could also undermine confidence in the vaccines, he warned: “A third shot will increase skepticism among people who have not yet received a dose that the vaccines will help them.”

Taken together, the new studies show overall that vaccines are about 55 percent effective against all infections, 80 percent against symptomatic infections, and 90 percent or more against hospitalization, noted Ellie Murray, an epidemiologist at Boston University.

“These numbers are actually very good,” said Dr. Murray. “The only group for which this data would suggest boosters for me are the immunocompromised.”

Updated

Aug. 19, 2021, 10:57 a.m. ET

The apparent decrease in the vaccine’s effectiveness against infection could instead have been caused by increased exposure to the highly contagious Delta variant during a period of unrestrained social interaction, she added: “This seems like a real possibility to me, given many early vaccines motivated were the desire to see friends and family and return to normal. “

Dr. Murray said a booster vaccination would undoubtedly boost a person’s immunity, but the added benefit can be minimal – and just as easily achieved by wearing a mask or avoiding indoor dining and crowded bars.

The government’s focus on vaccines has undermined the importance of building other precautions into people’s lives in a convenient and sustainable way and strengthening testing capacity, said Dr. Murray and other experts.

“This is one of the reasons I think the government’s focus on vaccines is so damaging to morality,” she added. “We probably won’t get back to normal anytime soon.”

Before people can start the booster, the Food and Drug Administration must first authorize a third dose of the vaccines manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, and an advisory committee from the CDC must review the evidence and make recommendations.

One of the new CDC studies analyzed the effectiveness of vaccines in residents of nearly 4,000 nursing homes from March 1 to May 9 before the advent of the Delta variant and of nearly 15,000 nursing homes from June 21 to August 1 as the new infections variant dominated in the country.

The effectiveness of the vaccines in preventing infection dropped from about 75 percent to 53 percent between those dates, the study found. The protection of the vaccines against serious illness has not been assessed.

Understand the state of vaccination and masking requirements in the United States

    • Mask rules. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July recommended that all Americans, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks in public places indoors in areas with outbreaks, reversing the guidelines offered in May. See where the CDC guidelines would apply and where states have implemented their own mask guidelines. The battle over masks is controversial in some states, with some local leaders defying state bans.
    • Vaccination regulations. . . and B.Factories. Private companies are increasingly demanding corona vaccines for employees with different approaches. Such mandates are legally permissible and have been confirmed in legal challenges.
    • College and Universities. More than 400 colleges and universities require a vaccination against Covid-19. Almost all of them are in states that voted for President Biden.
    • schools. On August 11, California announced that teachers and staff at both public and private schools would have to get vaccinated or have regular tests, the first state in the nation to do so. A survey published in August found that many American parents of school-age children are against mandatory vaccines for students, but are more supportive of masking requirements for students, teachers and staff who do not have a vaccination.
    • Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and large health systems require their employees to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, due to rising case numbers due to the Delta variant and persistently low vaccination rates in their communities, even within their workforce.
    • new York. On August 3, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that workers and customers will be required to provide proof of vaccination when dining indoors, gyms, performances, and other indoor situations. City hospital staff must also be vaccinated or have weekly tests. Similar rules apply to employees in New York State.
    • At the federal level. The Pentagon announced that it would make coronavirus vaccinations compulsory for the country’s 1.3 million active soldiers “by mid-September at the latest. President Biden announced that all civil federal employees would need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or undergo regular tests, social distancing, mask requirements and travel restrictions.

Nursing homes did not have to report the number of residents vaccinated until after June 6, which “makes comparisons over time very difficult,” said Dr. Murray. “It is entirely possible that the effectiveness of the vaccine reported here has not really diminished over time.”

The decline in effectiveness could also be due to the spread of the Delta variant, said Dr. Gounder.

“It makes sense to give vaccinated nursing home residents an extra dose of vaccine, but what will have an even bigger impact on protecting these nursing home residents is vaccinating their caregivers,” she said. Many caregivers in long-term care facilities remain unvaccinated.

A second study evaluated data from New York State from May 3 to July 25, when the Delta variant grew to more than 80 percent of new cases. The effectiveness of vaccines in preventing cases in adults fell from 91.7 percent to 79.8 percent during that time, the study found. But the vaccines remained just as effective at preventing hospital stays.

In those weeks, New York recorded 9,675 breakthrough infections – about 20 percent of the state’s total cases – and 1,271 hospital admissions of vaccinated people, accounting for 15 percent of all Covid-19 hospital admissions.

Although fully immunized people of all ages contracted the virus, the vaccine’s effectiveness fell the most, from 90.6 percent to 74.6 percent in people ages 18 to 49 – who are often the least likely to take precautions and are most likely to socialize .

Data from Israel suggests immunity to infection has declined in vaccinated adults aged 65 and over. But in the New York data, the effectiveness of the vaccines in this group hardly diminished.

Adults aged 65 and over were hospitalized more often than other age groups, regardless of their vaccination status. But the vaccines did not show a decrease in effectiveness against hospital admissions in any of the age groups.

The CDC’s third study found the vaccines showed 90 percent effectiveness against hospital stays in the country, “which is excellent,” noted Dr. Gounder.

The vaccines provided less protection against hospitalization in immunocompromised people. “But not all immunocompromised people will respond to an extra dose of vaccine,” noted Dr. Gounder.

To protect these vulnerable people, everyone around them should be vaccinated and continue to wear masks, she added.

The vaccines appear to be less effective than the studies that led to their approval, as those studies were done before the delta variant emerged.

Statistically, as more unvaccinated people become infected, recover, and gain natural immunity, the vaccines may lose relative effectiveness. And scientists always expected that the proportion of those who were vaccinated among those infected would increase if more people were vaccinated.

If preventing infection is the goal, it would be smarter to develop a booster shot of a nasal spray vaccine that will create better immunity in the nose and throat where the virus enters the body, said Dr. Gounder.

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Three Research, One End result: Coronavirus Vaccines Level the Manner Out of the Pandemic

Three Studies, One Result: Coronavirus Vaccines Point the Way Out of the Pandemic

Three scientific studies released on Monday offered fresh evidence that widely used vaccines will continue to protect people against the coronavirus for long periods, possibly for years, and can be adapted to fortify the immune system still further if needed.

Most people immunized with the mRNA vaccines may not need boosters, one study found, so long as the virus and its variants do not evolve much beyond their current forms — which is not guaranteed. Mix-and-match vaccination shows promise, a second study found, and booster shots of one widely used vaccine, if they are required, greatly enhance immunity, according to a third report.

Scientists had worried that the immunity conferred by vaccines might quickly wane or that they might somehow be outrun by a rapidly evolving virus. Together, the findings renew optimism that the tools needed to end the pandemic are already at hand, despite the rise of contagious new variants now setting off surges around the globe.

“It’s nice to see that the vaccines are recapitulating what we’ve also seen with natural infection,” said Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona, said, “Remember all that stuff at the beginning where people were panicking over antibodies vanishing?” With all the good news now, he said, “it’s hard for me to see how and why we would need boosters of the same thing every six to nine months.”

The coronavirus may be evolving, but so are the body’s defenders. In a study published in the journal Nature, researchers discovered that the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna set off a persistent immune reaction in the body that may protect against the coronavirus for years, in part because important immune cells continue to develop for longer than thought.

Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues reported last month that immunity might last for years, possibly a lifetime, in people who were infected with the coronavirus and later vaccinated.

But it was unclear whether vaccination alone might have a similarly long-lasting effect.

In the new study, his team found that 15 weeks after the first vaccination, immune cells in the body were still organizing — becoming increasingly sophisticated and learning to recognize a growing set of viral genetic sequences.

The longer these cells have to practice, the more likely they are to thwart variants of the coronavirus that may emerge. The results suggest that the vast majority of vaccinated people will be protected over the long term — at least, against the existing coronavirus variants.

Older adults, people with weak immune systems and those who take drugs that suppress immunity nonetheless may need boosters. But people who survived Covid-19 and were later immunized may never need additional shots, because their immune responses seem to be particularly powerful.

The study looked at mRNA vaccines and did not consider the vaccines made by Johnson & Johnson or AstraZeneca. Dr. Ellebedy said he expected the immune responses produced by those vaccines to be less durable than those produced by mRNA vaccines.

New research suggests that a mix-and-match approach may work as efficiently. People who have had a dose of the Johnson & Johnson or AstraZeneca vaccines may do well to opt for an mRNA vaccine as the second dose.

In a British vaccine study published on Monday, volunteers produced high levels of antibodies and immune cells after getting one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and one dose of the AstraZeneca shot.

Updated 

June 28, 2021, 9:05 p.m. ET

Administering the vaccines in either order is likely to provide potent protection, Dr. Matthew Snape, a vaccine expert at the University of Oxford, said at a news conference on Monday. “Any of these schedules, I think could be argued, would be expected to be effective,” he said.

Dr. Snape and his colleagues began the trial, called Com-COV, in February. In the first wave of the study, they gave 830 volunteers one of four combinations of vaccines. Some got two doses of either Pfizer-BioNTech or AstraZeneca, both of which have been shown to be effective against Covid-19. Others got a dose of AstraZeneca followed by one of Pfizer, or vice versa.

Those who got two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech produced levels of antibodies about 10 times greater than in those who got two doses of AstraZeneca. Volunteers who got Pfizer-BioNTech followed by AstraZeneca produced antibody levels about five times greater than in those who received two doses of AstraZeneca.

And volunteers who got AstraZeneca followed by Pfizer-BioNTech reached antibody levels about as great as in those who got two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech.

Another promising result came when the researchers looked at levels of immune cells primed to attack the coronavirus. Mixing the vaccines produced higher levels of the cells than two doses of the same vaccine.

Dr. Snape said it wasn’t clear yet why mixing brought that advantage: “It’s very intriguing, let’s say that much,”

Dr. Snape and his colleagues have begun another similar mixing trial, including vaccines from Moderna and Novavax on the list of possibilities. But he stopped short of recommending a routine mix-and-match strategy. For now, he said, the best course of action remains getting two doses of the same vaccine.

Large clinical trials have clearly demonstrated that this strategy reduces the chances of getting Covid-19. “Your default should be what is proven to work,” Dr. Snape said.

But for many people, that may not always be possible. Vaccine shipments are sometimes delayed because of manufacturing problems, for example. Younger people in some countries have been advised not to get a second dose of AstraZeneca, because of concerns about the small risk of developing blood clots.

In such situations, it’s important to know whether people can switch to another vaccine for a second dose. “This provides reassuring evidence that should work,” Dr. Snape said.

Despite the encouraging news that most people may not need boosters of mRNA vaccines, there may be some circumstances in which third shots are needed. So vaccine manufacturers have been testing booster doses that could be deployed just in case.

The results make for good news. Researchers reported on Monday that a third dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine generated a strong immune response in clinical trial volunteers.

Ninety study volunteers in Britain were among the first to receive the shots in a clinical trial last year. This past March, they were given a third dose, roughly 30 weeks after their second. Laboratory analyses showed that the third dose raised antibody levels to a point higher than seen even a month after their second dose — an encouraging sign that a third shot should provide new protection even if the potency of the first two doses were to wane.

The study was posted online in a preliminary preprint form, but has not yet been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal.

“We do have to be in a position where we could boost, if it turned out that was necessary,” Andrew Pollard, an Oxford University vaccine researcher, said at a news briefing on Monday. “I think we have encouraging data in this preprint to show that boosters could be used and would be effective at boosting the immune response.”

But if booster shots are deemed necessary in the coming months, availability could be severely limited, especially in poorer countries that are lacking enough supply to give even first doses to their most vulnerable citizens.

Earlier this month, the National Institutes of Health announced that it had begun a new clinical trial of people fully vaccinated with any of the three authorized vaccines in the United States. The goal is to test whether a booster shot of the vaccine made by Moderna will increase antibodies against the virus. Initial results are expected later this summer.

The AstraZeneca vaccine has won authorization in 80 countries since last December but is not approved for use in the United States, which already has more than enough doses of three other authorized vaccines to meet demand.

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C.D.C Research Say Younger Adults Are Much less Prone to Get Vaccinated

C.D.C Studies Say Young Adults Are Less Likely to Get Vaccinated

Younger Americans are less likely to be vaccinated than older ones, and factors such as income and education can affect vaccination reluctance, according to two new studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

By May 22, 57 percent of adults had received at least one dose of vaccine, the authors found in one of the new publications, but the rate fluctuated widely depending on age: of those 65 or older, 80 percent were at least partially vaccinated, compared with 38 Percent of 18 to 29 year olds.

Part of the rate gap was due to the fact that many young adults were not eligible for vaccination until March or April. But uptake has also been slower among younger Americans, and a significant proportion of them remain hesitant.

If vaccination initiation rates remain stable, only 58 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds will be vaccinated by the end of August, compared with 95 percent of 65-year-olds, the researchers found.

Immunization rates have lagged among young men, people who live in rural counties, and people who live in counties where a high proportion of the population is low-income, uninsured, or without access to a computer or the Internet.

In a second study, 24.9 percent of the 18 to 39-year-olds questioned said that they would probably or definitely not get vaccinated. Those who were young, black, low-income, had no health insurance, lived outside of metropolitan areas, or had a lower level of education were less likely to say they had vaccinated or said they were definitely planning to vaccinate.

The studies highlight the hurdles remaining in improving vaccination coverage, two weeks to President Biden’s self-imposed July 4 deadline to get 70 percent of adults at least partially vaccinated. In recent weeks, his government has changed its approach by moving away from mass vaccination centers and adopting more targeted strategies, including setting up mobile or pop-up vaccination clinics and on-site vaccination events in black barbershops.

The US vaccination campaign began on December 14th. Healthcare workers, adults aged 75 and over, and members of other high-risk groups were generally the first to be considered, although vaccination guidelines varied from state to state. By April 19, all adults were eligible for the recordings. Using the vaccination data submitted by the states, a team of CDC researchers analyzed vaccination patterns across demographic groups.

They also calculated the percentage of people in each age group who received their first dose during a given week. This “initiation rate” of the vaccine was highest in adults aged 65 and over, peaking the week of February 7, when 8 percent of adults in this group received their first dose.

Between April 19 and May 22, the proportion of 18 to 29 year olds who received their first dose fell from 3.6 percent to 1.9 percent.

“If the current vaccination rate continues through August, vaccination rates will remain significantly lower in young adults than in older adults,” the researchers wrote.

In the second study, between March 5 and May 2, the researchers interviewed a nationally representative sample of adults, including 2,726 18- to 39-year-olds. Of those who said they probably or definitely would not get the vaccine, 57 percent said they didn’t trust the vaccine, while 56 percent expressed concern about possible side effects and 36 percent said they didn’t need the vaccine.

The study also suggested possible strategies for increasing vaccination coverage. Of those who said they were unsure or likely to get the vaccine, 20 to 40 percent said they would be more likely to get it if they had more information about its safety and effectiveness if it would prevent them from doing so. spreading the virus to family and friends, or when it would allow them to return to normal social activities.

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All Her Life Research: A Downtown Dancer Finds Her Voice

All Her Life Studies: A Downtown Dancer Finds Her Voice

Leslie Cuyjet has performed with dozens of contemporary choreographers over the years, but she’s still something of a mystery. Her subtle, strong presence unassumingly grounds the stage. She has a way of revealing and receding.

But the layers are being peeled back: Lately, Cuyjet, 40, has unveiled a potent choreographic voice, excavating the solo form through video, writing and, of course, the dancing body.

“Blur,” a solo that looks at objectification and race, is set to debut on Friday at the Shed as part of its Open Call series. Cuyjet (pronounced SOO-zhay) also has a video piece, “For All Your Life Studies,” in an exhibition called “In Practice: You may go, but this will bring you back,” at SculptureCenter in Long Island City. Looking ahead, she’ll appear live on June 13 as part of the Performance Mix Festival in Manhattan and offer a virtual presentation on July 11 for the Center for Performance Research.

Earlier in May, as part of the Kitchen’s Dance and Process series, she presented “With Marion,” an elegant, complex look at identity partly inspired by Marion Cuyjet, her great-aunt, a pioneering teacher of Black ballet dancers who formed the Judimar School of Dance in Philadelphia in 1948.

“With Marion” seems to sum up Cuyjet’s approach as a choreographer, which is to bring the past into the present through writing and movement, as well as to surround herself with intimate artifacts. In this labyrinthine work of video, text and movement, she brought the image of her pandemic studio — a desk — into the space (Queenslab in Ridgewood, Queens), and operated a complex system of projections that included a photograph of her great-aunt.

It’s a feat to pull off something so conceptual and personal; Moriah Evans and Yve Laris Cohen — who curate Dance and Process, an incubator that affords choreographers the space and time to develop work — were impressed. Evans said she admired the nuances of seemingly simple gestures in the piece, as well as its “delicate shifts,” which “contain all the complexity that I think is within Leslie as a person and as a performer: the subtlety, the control, but also the anger, the rage, the freedom.”

Cuyjet’s dance lineage and her experience growing up in a middle-class Black family are complicated for her. In “With Marion,” she said she was looking at the privilege afforded by light skin. Marion “started teaching because she was kicked out of the corps in a ballet company when they found out that she was Black,” she said. “But before that, she had been successfully passing.”

Cuyjet didn’t know her great-aunt well. “When I started really getting into dance — I was maybe a preteen or a teenager — someone at a family reunion was just like, ‘You know that she’s a dancer,’” Cujyet said. “I thought she was this untouchable character. There’s something bigger brewing about celebrating her and her life and her legacy; this piece for the Kitchen felt like a start.”

As she digs deeper into how her identity both shapes and is shaped by the world, Cuyjet seems to be the kind of choreographer whose works, once unleashed, will continue to grow and morph. In the video “Life Studies,” she explores a favorite topic: Black bodies and water. Her younger self is shown swimming in a competition as well as simply basking by the pool. The children’s laughter you hear alongside splashing water is infectious, a familiar song of summer.

“That was just an expression of the privileges that I had growing up,” Cuyjet said. “I have all these home videos of us swimming in competition and enjoyment, and that’s the makeup of this piece.”

Over the years, Cuyjet has danced for many choreographers, including Kim Brandt, Jane Comfort, Niall Jones, Juliana F. May and Cynthia Oliver, her mentor. She loves to be in a process of collaboration. “Years and years of my work is embedded in Jane Comfort’s work,” she said. But “I started asking questions like, ‘What is my work going to be?’”

It then became clear to her, she said. She wanted to be the one in charge.

Cuyjet has also become more vocal on another topic: In a joint interview in March with another Black choreographer — “Leslie Cuyjet and Angie Pittman are not the same dancer” — she talks about the “shared experience of what it’s like to be the black dot on the white stage.”

Recently, Cuyjet spoke about some of her projects and practices, which weave together her life and her art. What follows are edited excerpts from that conversation.

How did “With Marion” develop?

It was completely shaped by the pandemic. I really started picking up writing to make sense of what was happening and to catalog this momentous occasion in our lifetime. I created a photograph: a collaged image of items and objects that were on and around my desk.

And that includes an image of Marion, which shows up in the work. What kind of comfort did having her so close to you during the pandemic bring?

I don’t know. She was tenacious, stubborn. I don’t know why I feel hesitant to talk about this, but I think the reason that I perform for other people is so that I don’t have to be out in front. I don’t have to use my own voice.

But that is changing. Why?

In the summer, with the movement for Black lives, I felt myself just sort of shoved in front of a microphone. And it felt really uncomfortable for me to feel like it was earned or deserved. And I think when I look to Marion — and I looked at everything that she went through for me to have this place where I am in this privilege — I feel like I have to take some of these opportunities. Now it feels like I can talk about nuance and I can talk about how my experience might be different than other Black artists.

How do you see your self as a Black woman in the contemporary dance scene?

I recently had a conversation with Angie Pittman [for Critical Correspondence, the online publication of Movement Research]. It was so monumental to talk about how, basically, we’re interchangeable. We are rarely cast in the same pieces.

This experience of being fluent in so many different dance languages and so many different postmodern and experimental forms is that it’s hard to decipher whether you are there for your virtuosity and knowledge or to check a box on somebody’s grant application. I want to feel like I’ve earned everything that I have, and I work really hard and I work all the time.

For years.

For years. It’s really isolating to be typecast. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but then there’s the other side of that, where it’s like, “Oh you’re Black, so you can give me these things.”

I want to feel free to let my freak flag fly a little bit, instead of being contained into “this is what Black art is.” And I’m definitely calling my work “Black art,” but sometimes I feel like that’s been challenged and I’ve had to defend it, and it’s just like, why? Why do I have to do this?

What is the background of your SculptureCenter video?

The piece grew out of research for a life-insurance project. My great-grandfather was the president of a Black-owned life-insurance company and was able to give my dad’s side of the family mobility and property and all these things. My mom’s first job was at the insurance company. So it really sort of secured a middle class-ness of both sides of my family.

How else has your family influenced your work?

I remember my parents [who grew up on the South Side of Chicago] telling me a childhood friend of theirs wrote this book about the way they were brought up, and it was Margo Jefferson’s “Negroland.” And I was like, Margo Jefferson was your friend? They sent me a copy and I read it, and I was floored. I changed the whole trajectory of my work. [Laughs]

Her memoir is about being a member of Chicago’s Black elite. Do you have a sense of privilege that is uncomfortable for you?

Absolutely. And it’s hard to acknowledge. And it’s so complicated when people are like: “No, but you have so much oppression. So it’s OK.” [Laughs] But this book and the way that Margo spells it out about being raised this way — it made a lot of sense to me. It’s making me understand my place in the world.

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Air flow and Testing Can Assist Maintain U.S. Faculties Open in Fall, Research Counsel

Ventilation and Testing Can Help Keep U.S. Schools Open in Fall, Studies Suggest

Several measures to mitigate Covid-19 – including improving ventilation, requiring adults to wear face masks, and taking frequent surveillance tests – can help keep schools open and students safe, according to two new studies.

The studies, released on Friday, come as many school districts work out their plans for the fall. They also follow guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that all schools teaching students from kindergarten through 12th grade will continue until the end of the 2020-2021 school year following the agency’s latest move to admit vaccinated people Implement guidelines for wearing masks should not use masks indoors. The agency also upheld its proposals to monitor physical distancing and test for coronavirus infections.

In one of the new studies, researchers from the CDC and the Georgia Department of Public Health surveyed 169 elementary schools in Georgia that offered face-to-face learning last fall. The group asked schools about their pandemic responses and collected data on the coronavirus cases discovered between November 16 and December 11 before vaccines were used in the United States.

The researchers found that the incidence of the virus in schools that had improved their ventilation – by opening windows or doors or using fans – was 35 percent lower than in schools that did not use these practices. In schools that combined better ventilation with air filtration – for example through the use of HEPA filters – the fall rates were 48 percent lower.

The researchers found that all teachers and staff had to wear masks to reduce the incidence of the virus by 37 percent. Schools that required students to wear masks had a 21 percent lower incidence of the virus, but that reduction was not statistically significant, the scientists found. This may be due to the fact that adults are more likely to transmit the virus than children, or simply to a small sample size.

“Since the universal and correct use of masks can reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission and is a relatively inexpensive and easy to implement strategy, the results of this report suggest that the universal and correct use of masks is an important Covid-19 -Prevention strategy in schools is a multi-component approach, ”write the researchers.

A second study, conducted by researchers from the Utah Department of Health and the University of Utah, tracked the implementation of two coronavirus screening programs in state schools. A program that ran in January 2021 allowed schools with outbreaks to conduct school-wide testing instead of switching to distance learning.

“The schools could either do what they did the fall, switching to remote control for two weeks to break the chains of transmission, or they could test all of them,” said Dr. Adam Hersh, one of the study’s authors and a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Utah. “And those who tested negative could return to face-to-face learning, and those who tested positive would obviously be isolated.”

In a second testing program, students had to be tested for the coronavirus every 14 days in order to participate in sports or other extracurricular activities. Both initiatives relied on rapid antigen tests, which are less sensitive but cheaper and faster than standard PCR tests.

That year, between January 4 and March 20, 28 high schools in the state reported sizeable outbreaks. Fifteen schools decided to switch to distance learning for two weeks, while the other 13 decided to run surveillance tests instead. Of the 13,809 students who were tested as part of this screening, only 0.7 percent were positive, the scientists reported. All 13 schools remained open.

“This is a huge achievement from a public health perspective,” said Kendra Babitz, coronavirus testing coordinator for the Utah Department of Health and one of the study’s authors. “Testing is and should be a mitigation strategy that schools use to prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in schools,” she added, referring to the virus that causes Covid-19.

Over the winter, 95 percent of school sports events took place on schedule, the researchers found, although they didn’t compare that number to a control group of schools without screening programs. “This is similar to what happens in the normal season,” said Dr. Hersh. “The show could go on.”

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Health

Pfizer Vaccine Is Extremely Efficient In opposition to Variants, Research Discover

Pfizer Vaccine Is Highly Effective Against Variants, Studies Find

The second new study, published in The Lancet, was carried out by researchers from the Israel Ministry of Health and Pfizer. It is based on more than 230,000 coronavirus infections that occurred in Israel between January 24th and April 3rd. During that period, B.1.1.7 accounted for nearly 95 percent of all coronavirus cases in the country, with more than half of which vaccinated its population.

The researchers found that the vaccine was more than 95 percent effective against coronavirus infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in people aged 16 and over who were fully vaccinated. It also worked well in older adults. Among those 85 years old or older, the vaccine was more than 94 percent effective against infection, hospitalization, and death.

As the percentage of people fully vaccinated increased in each age group, the incidence of coronavirus infections decreased in this cohort, the researchers found. The decline in infection rates was more in line with the timing of increases in vaccine coverage in each age group than the start of a nationwide lockdown. The results suggest that Israel’s rapid pace of vaccination was responsible for the decline in infections in the country.

“I’m just so happy to see this data that these vaccines have such an amazing impact on controlling infection and disease in the real world,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University.

Both studies also reported that two doses of the vaccine provided significantly more protection than one dose. For example, in the Israel study, one dose of the vaccine was 77 percent effective against death, while two doses were 96.7 percent effective.

“It absolutely underscores the need for the second dose,” said Dr. Kathleen Neuzil, who directs the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Taken together, the studies suggest that vaccination remains a plausible way out of the pandemic even with the new variants, experts said. “If we can get vaccines out into the world and improve reporting,” said Dr. Neuzil, “I believe that we can go beyond that and stay up to date on the emergence of new variants.”

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Vaccines Are Efficient In opposition to the New York Variant, Research Discover

Vaccines Are Effective Against the New York Variant, Studies Find

For weeks, New Yorkers have been witnessing the alarming rise of a native variant of the coronavirus that has stubbornly kept the number of cases in the city high. City officials have repeatedly warned that the variant could be more contagious and evade the immune response.

At least on this second point, they can now breathe easier: Both the Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines will be effective in preventing serious illness and death of the variant, according to two independent studies.

Antibodies stimulated by these vaccines are only slightly less effective in controlling the variant than the original form of the virus, both studies found.

“We don’t see any big differences,” said Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York and a member of the team that published one of the studies on Thursday.

The final result? “Get vaccinated,” he said.

The results are based on laboratory experiments with blood samples from a few vaccinated people and have not yet been assessed by experts. Still, they are consistent with what is known about similar variants, several experts said, and they complement a growing body of research suggesting that the two main vaccines in the United States protect against all of the variants identified so far.

“The takeaway message is that the vaccines against the New York variant and the South African variant as well as the British variant will work,” said Nathan Landau, a virologist at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine who led the study.

The vaccines spur the body to build an expansive immune response using thousands of types of antibodies and different types of immune cells. A subset of these immune fighters, called neutralizing antibodies, is essential to preventing infection. But even when neutralizing antibodies are in short supply or even absent, the rest of the immune system can deploy enough defenses to fight off serious illness and death.

In both new studies, neutralizing antibodies from people who were vaccinated were able to thwart the virus better than those from people who developed antibodies because they had Covid-19. A head-to-head comparison of the two sets of antibodies offered a possible explanation: Antibodies from vaccinated individuals are spread over a wider range of parts of the virus, so no single mutation has a major impact on their effectiveness – vaccines are therefore a better choice against variants than immunity from natural ones Infections.

The variant first identified in New York, known to scientists as the B.1.526, sped through the city after its first discovery in November. By April 13, it was one in four diagnosed cases, and as of April 13, almost half of the cases. Variant B.1.1.7, which brought Great Britain to a standstill, is also widespread in New York. Together, the two account for more than 70 percent of coronavirus cases in the city.

Concern for the variant identified in New York has centered on a form that contains a mutation that scientists call Eek. The Eek mutation subtly changes the shape of the virus, making it difficult for antibodies to target the virus and, as a result, underperforms vaccines.

Updated

April 23, 2021 at 12:36 AM ET

In the second study, Dr. Landau states that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are only marginally less protective against the variant that devastated the UK and against forms of the variant discovered in New York that do not contain the Eek mutation.

Several laboratory studies have shown that antibodies induced by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are slightly less effective against a third variant identified in South Africa that also contains Eek. Other vaccines fared worse. South Africa suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine after clinical studies showed that the vaccine did not prevent mild or moderate disease of the variant circulating there.

“It already started at a lower level in terms of the immunity it produced,” said Dr. Nut branch about the AstraZeneca vaccine. Regarding the Pfizer and Moderna recordings, he said, “We are so lucky in this country to have these vaccines compared to the rest of the world.”

Florian Krammer, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine on Mount Sinai who was not involved in any of the new studies, said he was more concerned about other countries’ vaccination programs than the variants themselves.

“I’m less worried about variants than I was two months ago,” he said, but added, “I’m worried about countries that don’t have enough vaccines and that don’t have this vaccine launch.” In all honesty, I don’t worry about the US anymore. “

Dr. Landau also tested monoclonal antibodies used to treat Covid-19 against the variants. They found that the cocktail of monoclonal antibodies made by Regeneron was effective against both the variant discovered in New York and the original virus.

The studies are reassuring, but they show that the Eek mutation is being observed, said Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

“This could certainly be a step towards making the virus a little more resistant to infection- and vaccine-mediated immunity,” said Dr. Bloom. “I don’t think it’s something people need to be alerted about right away, but it definitely impresses us as important.”

Dr. Bloom led the analysis comparing vaccine-induced antibodies with those produced by natural infections. He found that the strongest antibodies bind to multiple sites in a key part of the virus. Even if a mutation affected binding at one site in that region, antibodies targeting the remaining sites would still be protective.

Antibodies induced by the vaccine cover many more sites in this region than those due to natural infection – and are therefore less likely to be affected by a mutation in any one site.

The study only looked at antibodies stimulated by the Moderna vaccine, but the results for the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine are likely to be the same, he added.

“This could potentially be a good thing as the virus creates mutations,” said Dr. Bloom.

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New California Variant Extra Contagious, Two Research Verify

New California Variant More Contagious, Two Studies Confirm

A variant, first discovered in California in December, is more contagious than previous forms of the coronavirus. Two new studies have shown concerns that emerging mutants like these could hamper the sharp decline in cases across the state and potentially elsewhere.

In one of the new studies, researchers found that the variant had spread rapidly in a neighborhood of San Francisco in the past few months. The other report confirmed that the variant has risen sharply across the state and revealed that it produces twice as many virus particles in a person’s body as other variants. This study also suggested that the variant can bypass the immune system – and vaccines – better than others.

“I wish I had better news for you – that this variant doesn’t matter at all,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, a virologist at the University of California at San Francisco. “But unfortunately we just follow science.”

None of the studies have yet been published in a scientific journal. And experts don’t know how much this variant is public health compared to others that are also spreading in California.

A variant called B.1.1.7 came to the US from the UK, where it quickly became the dominant form of the virus and overloaded hospitals there. Studies of UK medical records suggest that B.1.1.7 is not only more communicable, but also more lethal than previous variants.

Some experts said the new variant in California is of concern, but is unlikely to be as much of a burden as B.1.1.7.

“I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this one transmits more than anyone else in the field,” said William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health who was not involved in the research. “But there is no evidence that it is in the same stadium as B.1.1.7.”

Dr. Chiu accidentally stumbled upon the new variant for the first time. In December, he and other researchers in California were concerned about the discovery of B.1.1.7 in the UK. They began screening their samples from positive coronavirus tests in California and sequencing viral genomes to see if B.1.1.7 had made it to their state.

On New Year’s Eve, Dr. Chiu is shocked to find a previously unknown variant that made up a quarter of the samples he and his colleagues had collected. “I thought that was crazy,” he said.

It turned out that researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles discovered the same variant that soared to high levels in Southern California. Dr. Chiu announced his first finding and the Cedars-Sinai team went public two days later.

Since then, researchers have studied the new variant, known as B.1.427 / B.1.429, in more detail to determine its origin and track its spread. It has performed in 45 states and several other countries so far, including Australia, Denmark, Mexico, and Taiwan. But it has only launched in California so far.

It was initially unclear whether the variant was inherently more transferable than others, or whether it had risen sharply in California due to gatherings that became overarching events.

“Just by chance, poor wedding or choir practice can cause a large frequency difference,” said Joe DeRisi, co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, who studied the spread of the variant.

In a new study that will be posted online shortly, Dr. Chiu and his colleagues received 2,172 virus samples from across the state between September and January. In early September, the researchers found no signs of B.1.427 / B.1.429. But by the end of January it had become the predominant variant in California. Dr. Chiu and his colleagues estimate that the cases caused by the variant now double every 18 days.

Dr. Chiu and his colleagues reviewed the medical records of 308 cases of Covid-19 in San Francisco and found that a greater percentage of people had died from the new variant than others. However, this result could be a statistical coincidence: there were only 12 deaths in the group, so the difference in deaths from one subgroup to another in a larger sample may not apply.

Updated

Apr. 23, 2021, 8:18 p.m. ET

The researchers also conducted experiments in the laboratory to find evidence that the new variant had a biological benefit. In one study, they showed that it was at least 40 percent more effective than previous variants at infecting human cells. When measuring the genetic material of swabs used for coronavirus testing, the researchers found that people infected with the variant produce a viral load twice as high as other variants.

The study also found that the new variant can bypass the immune system better than other variants. Antibodies from people who had recovered from infections with other variants were less effective at blocking the new variant in the laboratory. The same was true when the researchers used blood serum from people who had been vaccinated.

Still, the effect of the variant on immunity appears to be much less than that caused by a variant from South Africa called B.1.351. Dr. Chiu said it was not clear whether the vaccines used against B.1.427 / B.1.429 will be less effective.

“If we can get enough people vaccinated, we can deal with these variants simply because we don’t have ongoing transmission,” he said.

In a separate study that has not yet been published, Dr. DeRisi and his colleagues are carefully investigating how the variant is spreading in the Mission District, a predominantly Latin American neighborhood in San Francisco.

When examining samples in late November, the researchers found that 16 percent of the coronaviruses belonged to B.1.427 / B.1.429. After sequencing 630 genomes in January, they found that they made up 53 percent.

The researchers also looked at the distribution of this and other variants in 326 households. They found that people had a 35 percent chance of getting infected if someone had B.1.427 / B.1.429 in their home. If the person was infected with another variant, the rate was only 26 percent.

“What we see is a modest but significant difference,” said Dr. DeRisi.

Dr. Chiu said the San Francisco study provided a microcosm of how the variant has spread across the state. “The data they have from the mission district really supports our data and vice versa,” he said.

Dr. However, Harvard-based Hanage is not convinced that the variant poses a major threat. Every time B.1.1.7 appeared in a new country, it quickly exploded. In contrast, the variant discovered in California seems to have slowly gained dominance.

Dr. Chiu and his colleagues were able to estimate when B.1.427 / B.1.429 arose by comparing the mutations that have occurred in the viruses since they separated from their common ancestor. This analysis pointed to late spring. If that’s correct, it means the variant may have lurked at extremely low levels in California for four months or more.

“It’s not as big a deal as the others,” said Dr. Hanage. He speculates that if scientists sequence more coronavirus genomes elsewhere, they will find more of these moderately fast-spreading mutants. “Maybe there are variants everywhere, and we only see them where sequencing happens,” he said.

We may soon have new insights into how seriously these new variants should be taken. B.1.1.7 didn’t arrive in California until early December, and although it has doubled about every 12 days, it’s still about 2 percent of the coronaviruses in the state.

Now California is becoming a kind of virus cage match between the two variants. “My suspicion is that the B.1.1.7 will win,” said Dr. Hanage.

Dr. However, Chiu thinks it is possible that B.1.427 / B.1.429 will suppress the newcomer and continue to dominate the state.

“We’ll find out in the next few weeks,” he said.

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Research Counsel Folks Who Had Covid-19 Ought to Get Single Vaccine Dose

People Who Have Had Covid Should Get Single Vaccine Dose, Studies Suggest

Almost 30 million people in the United States – and likely many others whose diseases have never been diagnosed – have been infected with the coronavirus to date. Should these people still be vaccinated?

Two new studies answer this question with an emphatic yes.

In fact, research suggests that for these people, just one dose of the vaccine is enough to charge their antibodies and destroy the coronavirus – and even some other infectious variants.

The results of these new studies are consistent with the results of two others published in the past few weeks. Taken together, the research suggests that people who have had Covid-19 should be immunized – but a single dose of the vaccine may be enough.

“I think it’s a really strong rationale for why people who were previously infected with Covid should get the vaccine,” said Jennifer Gommerman, an immunologist at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the new research.

A person’s immune response to a natural infection varies widely. Most people make plenty of antibodies that last for many months. However, some people who have had mild or no symptoms of Covid-19 produce few antibodies that quickly drop to undetectable levels.

The vaccines “even hit the pitch,” said Dr. Gommerman, so that anyone who has recovered from Covid-19 will make enough antibodies to protect against the virus.

The latest study, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, analyzed blood samples from people with Covid-19. The results suggest that her immune system would have problems fighting off B.1.351, the coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa.

But a shot of the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccine changed the picture dramatically: It increased the amount of antibodies in her blood by a thousand times – “a massive, massive surge,” said Andrew T. McGuire, immunologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who led the study.

Rinsed with antibodies, samples from all participants were able to neutralize not only B.1.351, but also the coronavirus that caused the SARS epidemic in 2003.

In fact, the antibodies appeared to work better than those in people who did not have Covid and had received two doses of a vaccine. Several studies have shown that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are about five times less effective against the variant.

The researchers received blood samples from 10 volunteers in the Seattle Covid Cohort Study who were vaccinated months after contracting the coronavirus. Seven of the participants received the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and three received the Moderna vaccine.

Blood taken about two to three weeks after vaccination showed a significant increase in antibody levels compared to the samples taken before vaccination. The researchers don’t yet know how long the increased levels of antibodies will last, but “hopefully they will last,” said Dr. McGuire.

The researchers also saw a surge in immune cells remembering and fighting the virus, said Dr. McGuire. “It looks pretty clear that we are boosting their pre-existing immunity,” he said.

In another new study, New York University researchers found that a second dose of the vaccine was of no great benefit at all for people with Covid-19 – a phenomenon that has also been seen with vaccines against other viruses.

In this study, most people had been infected with the coronavirus eight or nine months previously, but their antibodies increased hundreds to a thousand times with the first dose of a vaccine. However, after the second dose, the antibody levels did not rise any further.

“It is real evidence of the strength of immunological memory that they are given a single dose and have a huge increase,” said Dr. Mark J. Mulligan, director of the NYU Langone Vaccine Center and lead author of the study.

In some parts of the world, including the United States, a significant minority of the population is already infected, noted Dr. Mulligan firmly. “You should definitely be vaccinated,” he said.

It is unclear whether the thousand-fold increase in antibody levels recorded in the laboratory will occur in real-world environments. However, research shows that a single shot is enough to significantly raise antibody levels, said Florian Krammer, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine on Mount Sinai in New York.

Dr. Krammer led another of the new studies that showed that people who had Covid-19 and received a dose of vaccine had more serious side effects from the vaccination and had more antibodies than those who had not been infected before.

“When you put all four papers together, you get pretty good information about people who have had an infection and only need one vaccination,” said Dr. Krammer.

He and other researchers are trying to convince scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend only one dose for those who have recovered from Covid-19.

Ideally, these people should be monitored after the first shot in case their antibody levels drop after a few weeks or months, said Dennis R. Burton, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

The fact that the charged antibodies seen in the new study can fight the 2003 SARS virus suggests that a single dose of the vaccine may have induced the volunteer’s bodies to produce “largely neutralizing antibodies” – immune molecules that are able to target a wide range of related antibodies to viruses, said Dr. Burton.

He and other scientists have spent decades investigating whether largely neutralizing antibodies can fight multiple versions of HIV at the same time. HIV mutates faster than any other virus and evades most antibodies quickly.

The new coronavirus is mutating much more slowly, but there are now several variants of the virus that appear to have become more contagious or which are thwarting the immune system. The new study could provide clues on how to make a single vaccine that stimulates the production of largely neutralizing antibodies that can destroy all variants of the coronavirus, said Dr. Burton.

Without such a vaccine, scientists would have to adjust the vaccines every time the virus changes significantly. “You’re kind of a whac-a-mole approach,” he said. It will likely take many months, if not more, to develop and test this type of vaccine against the coronavirus, but “this is the longer term way to approach this virus.”

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Folks Who Have Had Covid Ought to Get Single Vaccine Dose, Research Recommend

People Who Have Had Covid Should Get Single Vaccine Dose, Studies Suggest

Almost 30 million people in the United States – and likely many others whose diseases have never been diagnosed – have been infected with the coronavirus to date. Should these people still be vaccinated?

Two new studies answer this question with an emphatic yes.

In fact, research suggests that for these people, just one dose of the vaccine is enough to charge their antibodies and destroy the coronavirus – and even some other infectious variants.

The results of these new studies are consistent with the results of two others published in the past few weeks. Taken together, the research suggests that people who have had Covid-19 should be immunized – but a single dose of the vaccine may be enough.

“I think it’s a really strong rationale for why people who were previously infected with Covid should get the vaccine,” said Jennifer Gommerman, an immunologist at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the new research.

A person’s immune response to a natural infection varies widely. Most people make plenty of antibodies that last for many months. However, some people who have had mild or no symptoms of Covid-19 produce few antibodies that quickly drop to undetectable levels.

The vaccines “even hit the pitch,” said Dr. Gommerman, so that anyone who has recovered from Covid-19 will make enough antibodies to protect against the virus.

The latest study, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, analyzed blood samples from people with Covid-19. The results suggest that her immune system would have problems fighting off B.1.351, the coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa.

But a shot of the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccine changed the picture dramatically: It increased the amount of antibodies in her blood by a thousand times – “a massive, massive surge,” said Andrew T. McGuire, immunologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who led the study.

Rinsed with antibodies, samples from all participants were able to neutralize not only B.1.351, but also the coronavirus that caused the SARS epidemic in 2003.

In fact, the antibodies appeared to work better than those in people who did not have Covid and had received two doses of a vaccine. Several studies have shown that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are about five times less effective against the variant.

The researchers received blood samples from 10 volunteers in the Seattle Covid Cohort Study who were vaccinated months after contracting the coronavirus. Seven of the participants received the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and three received the Moderna vaccine.

Blood taken about two to three weeks after vaccination showed a significant increase in antibody levels compared to the samples taken before vaccination. The researchers don’t yet know how long the increased levels of antibodies will last, but “hopefully they will last,” said Dr. McGuire.

Updated

Apr. 19, 2021 at 12:01 am ET

The researchers also saw a surge in immune cells remembering and fighting the virus, said Dr. McGuire. “It looks pretty clear that we are boosting their pre-existing immunity,” he said.

In another new study, New York University researchers found that a second dose of the vaccine was of no great benefit at all for people with Covid-19 – a phenomenon that has also been seen with vaccines against other viruses.

In this study, most people had been infected with the coronavirus eight or nine months previously, but their antibodies increased hundreds to a thousand times with the first dose of a vaccine. However, after the second dose, the antibody levels did not rise any further.

“It is real evidence of the strength of immunological memory that they are given a single dose and have a huge increase,” said Dr. Mark J. Mulligan, director of the NYU Langone Vaccine Center and lead author of the study.

In some parts of the world, including the United States, a significant minority of the population is already infected, noted Dr. Mulligan firmly. “You should definitely be vaccinated,” he said.

It is unclear whether the thousand-fold increase in antibody levels recorded in the laboratory will occur in real-world environments. However, research shows that a single shot is enough to significantly raise antibody levels, said Florian Krammer, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine on Mount Sinai in New York.

Dr. Krammer led another of the new studies that showed that people who had Covid-19 and received a dose of vaccine had more serious side effects from the vaccination and had more antibodies than those who had not been infected before.

“When you put all four papers together, you get pretty good information about people who have had an infection and only need one vaccination,” said Dr. Krammer.

He and other researchers are trying to convince scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend only one dose for those who have recovered from Covid-19.

Ideally, these people should be monitored after the first shot in case their antibody levels drop after a few weeks or months, said Dennis R. Burton, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

The fact that the charged antibodies seen in the new study can fight the 2003 SARS virus suggests that a single dose of the vaccine may have induced the volunteer’s bodies to produce “largely neutralizing antibodies” – immune molecules that are able to target a wide range of related antibodies to viruses, said Dr. Burton.

He and other scientists have spent decades investigating whether largely neutralizing antibodies can fight multiple versions of HIV at the same time. HIV mutates faster than any other virus and evades most antibodies quickly.

The new coronavirus is mutating much more slowly, but there are now several variants of the virus that appear to have become more contagious or which are thwarting the immune system. The new study could provide clues on how to make a single vaccine that stimulates the production of largely neutralizing antibodies that can destroy all variants of the coronavirus, said Dr. Burton.

Without such a vaccine, scientists would have to adjust the vaccines every time the virus changes significantly. “You’re kind of a whac-a-mole approach,” he said. It will likely take many months, if not more, to develop and test this type of vaccine against the coronavirus, but “this is the longer term way to approach this virus.”