Moore told Nature she does not know why B. 1.351 infection results in a such a broad immune response, but she hopes to find out.
“It’s about the only thing I think about these days,” she said, speculating that the antibodies are recognising features of the viral spike protein that do not differ between variants.
Responding to Moore's research, co-led by Alex Sigal of the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban and posted on bioRxiv, Rockefeller University virologist Paul Bieniasz — who is also studying Covid-19 variants — told Nature: “Getting vaccines that will tackle the variants that are now circulating is an eminently solvable problem.
“It might be that we already have that solution.”
But Moore said: “I have infinite faith in the ability of a virus to escape an immune response.
“We've got to lower the global number of infections to the point where the virus doesn’t have as many opportunities to escape.”
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