According to the results of Mayo Clinic’s study of more than 35,000 COVID-19 patients, those who received a convalescent plasma donation within 3 days of diagnosis only had an 8.7% death rate the following week. However, patients that received the transfusion 4 or more days after diagnosis, had an 11.9% death rate during the following week. This difference meets the standards for statistical significance, indicating that convalescent plasma donation is helpful in COVID-19 treatment.
This is why the FDA granted an Emergency Use Authorization for convalescent plasma as COVID-19 treatment in August 2020. But with the virus mutating, you may be wondering: Is antibody-rich convalescent plasma still effective?
SARS-CoV-2 genetic variants continue to emerge and circulate around the world. Learning about the existing COVID-19 variants can help you understand how they occur and how scientists determine the best possible detection methods, treatments, and preventive measures against them. One of the ways you can help scientists learn more about these variants and how they may evolve is donating blood for research.
Why mutations happen and how these are spreading quickly
It is in the nature of viruses to constantly mutate, especially those with RNA as their genetic material, like COVD-19.
Here’s how it happens: When SARS-CoV-2 goes into your body, it sticks to one of your cells and its RNA enters the cell where it can make copies of itself and hijack ample amounts of your cells without being removed by your immune system. Mutation occurs during the copying process of the virus.
Mutations are typically small and won’t significantly affect how the virus works. In fact, they can make the virus weaker in some cases. However, there are times when a mutation enables the virus to copy itself more quickly and get into cells more easily.
Types of COVID-19 variants
SARS-CoV-2 variants are currently grouped into three categories:
- Variant of interest,
- Variant of concern, and
- The variant of high consequence.
A variant’s status may deescalate or escalate depending on the mutation, making continued research essential to identifying and controlling variants. As of writing, there are currently no variants that are considered ‘high consequence.’
Variants of interest
A variant of interest has specific genetic markers that may affect diagnostics, transmission, immune escape, or therapeutics. It has the potential to lead to unique outbreak clusters or cases, so it may require one or more suitable public health actions. This includes enhanced laboratory characterization and enhanced sequence surveillance to identify its spread patterns, its severity, efficacy of existing vaccines against it, and the efficacy of therapeutics.
These are the current variants of interest in the US that are being monitored:
- Eta (20A/S:484K), first identified in UK and Nigeria in December 2020
- Iota (20C/S:484K), first identified in New York (USA) in November 2020
- Kappa (20A/S:154K), first identified in India in December 2020
- 20A, first identified in India in October 2020
Variants of concern
These variants have evidence of high transmissibility and more severe disease, as well as a significant reduction in neutralization by antibodies from vaccination or previous infection. They also have a higher tendency to escape diagnostic detection:
- Alpha (20I/501Y.V1), first identified in the UK
- Beta (20H/501.V2), first identified in South Africa
- Delta (21A/S:478K), first identified in India
- Gamma (20J/501Y.V3), first identified in Japan/Brazil
Can new variants undermine the vaccines?
The fast spread of COVID-19 variants continues to affect society, with governments attempting to contain them through heightened surveillance, border restrictions, and lockdowns. There is also a growing concern that they could reduce the immune responses triggered by a previous infection and by vaccines.
Researchers continue to probe the different variants and their constituent mutations in the cell and animal models of SARS-CoV-2, testing them against the antibodies induced by natural infections and vaccines. A preprint released by a virology team at the University of Texas Medical Branch on January 8, 2021 found that the mutation shared by the variants from UK and South Africa did not impact the effectiveness of the Pfizer or BioNTech vaccines.
How labs are working out
COVID-19 variants will continue to mutate. There is no definite answer on whether the current vaccines will continue to provide protection against these changes or not.
However, scientists, researchers, laboratories, and vaccine manufacturers are working hard to detect and understand significant mutations and the best possible treatments and preventive measures against them. The scientific community is also working to design new diagnostic tests that can effectively detect and identify these new variants.
SPRL is supporting the research studies of those studying the new COVID-19 variants
You can help researchers study the new COVID-19 variants—particularly their behavior and genomes—with convalescent plasma donation. Convalescent plasma studies are also crucial in determining the antibody response of infected people to the virus, and ultimately, in finding a cure or an antidote.
Are you researching the COVID-19 variants? Feel free to reach out to us to get materials for your study. We would love to hear from you and help you with your research, so don’t hesitate to reach out. We are also encouraging those who have recovered from COVID-19 to donate blood for research at SPRL, so we can continue finding solutions that could help save more lives down the line.