The Sars-Cov-2 mutations observed so far don’t stop a vaccine from working

A video shared thousands of times on Facebook in just a few days claims that due to mutations in the novel coronavirus,“the vaccine can’t work”. This is wrong: Sars-CoV-2 is constantly mutating, which is the normal mode of functioning of a virus, and to date the observed variations have no obvious consequences on its behavior and none ‘Don’t prevent the principle of a vaccine, they explain several scientists.

This 2’20 “video, for example, has been shared here at least 3,600 times on Facebook since November 12. At least 7,500 shares there since November 11. We can still find it on this Facebook support page for Didier Raoult, with 3,400 shares from 11.

The speaking man, Louis Fouché, makes several erroneous claims about Sars-Cov-2 mutations.

Sars-CoV-2 is constantly changing

“Here, we are at the fourth variant in Marseille for six months, which means that it really changes all the time and the fourth variant is really very different from the first, it could almost be called Sars -CoV-3”, Louis Fouche in particular said. As explained by several virus experts and as summarized in this AFP report, Sars-Cov-2 actually mutates “All time” because this is its normal mode of operation.

When a virus enters a cell, it replicates: it copies itself to spread. With each replication, errors occur in the copy of the virus genome, such as a computer “bug”.

The virus genome is constantly changing without necessarily being significant.

In other words, it hasn’t changed significantly so far.

Genetic variations of the coronavirus are monitored around the world by researchers, who sequence the genome of the viruses they find and share them on an international database, GISAID. As of November 17, more than 200,000 genomic sequences have been submitted.

As Louis Fouché says, RNA viruses (genetic material close to DNA), such as Sars-CoV-2, mutate faster than DNA viruses because their coding errors are more frequent.

Except it does not specify that coronaviruses mutate less rapidly than other RNA viruses. So far, for example, Sars-Cov-2 sheds half as fast as influenza and four times faster than HIV, according to Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Basel (Switzerland), cited in the journal Nature in September. .

The fact that muti is not specific to Sars-CoV-2 and does not mute in a particularly important way, contrary to what Louis Fouché implies.

So much so that scientists agree that the virus that causes Covid-19 is relatively stable.

Variations of the virus do not prevent the vaccine principle

When we talk about the issue of mutations in a virus, the whole question is knowing what consequences they might have. They are important enough to significantly change the behavior of the virus: do they make it more or less virulent? More or less contagious? More or less contagious? More or less lethal?

To date, nothing is going one way than the other, scientists agree.

“For now, all virologists tell us that the mutations are too weak for any of them to be considered to have a real effect on the virus,” summarized for example on 30 September Yves Van Laethem, infectious disease specialist and cross-federal spokesperson for the fight against Covid-19 in Belgium, at AFP.

Mutations have been observed “without any consequences on the epidemic being demonstrated “, also noted Inserm in October.

Another question, are these variations in the virus fast enough and significant enough to prevent a vaccine?

According to Louis Fouché, the mutations mean that people can catch Covid a second or even a third time, which makes a vaccine impossible.

“Even people who have had positive antibodies, who should have developed immunity to the first virus, have had Covid a second time, Covid a third time”, says “çthis means the vaccine will never work. “

There are many cases of Covid-19 reinfection, a handful of which have been the subject of scientific publications, as explained by the experts in this AFP dispatch of 13 October.

But many questions remain and several factors can explain these reinfections, such as the gradual weakening of antibodies, exposure to a higher dose of the virus, or even favorable conditions in affected patients.

The idea that they may be due to a variant of the virus is not favored because to date because the observed variations do not seem to translate into a significant modification of the virus, as we have seen above.

And for now, these variations are not about a vaccine, as virologist Marie-Paule Kieny once again stated on November 17, as she had already said in September during a parliamentary hearing.

“At this time, there are no indications that these mutations could affect the ability of vaccines to recognize and protect them. (variants of) virus”, he told France Info.

“That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, we can come to a time when mutations are too important and it will be necessary to organize, modify the vaccine + formula as we do every year or almost every year for the flu vaccine,” continued the chairman of the scientific committee of the Covid-19 France vaccine.

Contrary to what Louis Fouché claims, the viral mutations observed so far do not show up “that a vaccine will not work”. Furthermore, even as these variations become more prominent, it may be possible to adapt the vaccine.

The duration of the protection of a vaccine is indeed a crucial topic, but it depends on the duration of the immune response induced by the vaccine and not, in the current state of knowledge, by the mutations of the virus.

Finally, Louis Fouché expresses doubts about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine from the Moderna company, which uses the “messenger RNA” technology.

“You don’t know how many viruses you will create, you don’t know if you will make too many and feel bad all the time or if you won’t get enough and you won’t protect yourself “, he claims.

The idea of ​​a vaccine is always the same: to teach the body to recognize a pathogen so that it can produce an immune response. But there are several ways to do this.

As in this dispatch of the AFP of November 16, the messenger RNA technique (also used by the vaccine candidate Pfizer / BioNtech) consists in injecting into the body strands of genetic instructions called messenger RNA, that is, the molecule that tells our cells what to do.

This technique is also explained here in this WHO 2017 document.

The vaccine’s messenger RNA is produced in the laboratory. It inserts and hacks this cellular machinery to make the body produce proteins or “antigens” specific to the coronavirus: its “spikes” (“spikes”), the points that adorn its surface and allow it to attach to human cells to penetrate them.

By recognizing these “foreign” molecules, the body will trigger an immune response and produce antibodies that can neutralize Sars-CoV-2 should it infect us.

Contrary to what Louis Fouché says, the organization is not “produce viruses” but a type of protein, harmless as such, then the antibodies that will remain to guard.

And this protein too “it won’t be produced permanently, it will stop” because as with any vaccine, the immune system will destroy the cells that produce the viral protein: “the process will then end by itself”, Bruno Pitard, Inserm / University of Nantes, told AFP this summer), at the head of a start-up working on this type of vaccine.

Unlike other types of vaccines, the virus, even killed or inactivated, is not injected.

Moderna announced a 94.5% effective vaccine on November 16 according to early results from its Phase 3 clinical trial, a week after Pfizer and BioNtech announced 90% effectiveness for theirs.

Louis Fouché, who multiplies videos on the Internet, is an anesthetist in Marseille. He is part of the Reinfocovid collective, which he intends to report to “collective psychosis” it’s a “handling” around Covid-19.