COVID-19 Vaccines Effective Against Known Variants, WHO Confirms

COVID-19 vaccines currently being deployed worldwide are effective against all known coronavirus variants, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday.

Hans Kluge, the European Regional Director of the WHO, revealed that all authorized vaccines in Europe and the United States appeared to be able to protect recipients against all known COVID-19 virus variants.

"All COVID-19 virus variants can be controlled in the same way with public health and social measures," Kluge said at a press conference. "All COVID-19 virus variants that have emerged so far do respond to the available approved vaccines," he added. The top health official's comments come as scientists are still trying to figure out the rate of effectiveness and transmissibility of some existing strains of concern.

The WHO has been monitoring four variants of concern since January 2020, including the B.1.617 mutation first detected in India. The variant has led to a health crisis in the country as its daily COVID-19 infection tally has reached 350,000. India’s total death toll currently stands at 287,122, according to the Health Ministry.

However, health experts warn that the numbers in India are severely underreported. They say that many patients are never admitted to hospitals or clinics, which have run out of bed space and oxygen supply.

The India (B.1.617) variant has been detected in 44 different countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, according to a recent weekly epidemiological update from the WHO. "We are still learning about the new variant, but it is able to spread rapidly," Kluge said.

Other variants of concern include B.1.1.7, first detected in the United Kingdom; B.1.351, first detected in South Africa; and P.1., originally found in Brazil.

Health experts at Johns Hopkins Medicine warned that more unknown variants of the novel coronavirus could still emerge and could be more resistant to formulas used in current vaccines. “New variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are detected every week,” Dr. Stuart Ray, vice chair of medicine for data integrity and analytics, said.

“Most come and go — some persist but don’t become more common; some increase in the population for a while, and then fizzle out. When a change in the infection pattern first pops up, it can be very hard to tell what’s driving the trend — changes to the virus, or changes in human behavior. It is worrisome that similar changes to the spike protein are arising independently on multiple continents,” he added.