The Hungarian public health authority (NNK) is researching a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus, first detected in the United Kingdom late last year, to determine whether currently available vaccines would be effective against it.
Virologist Zoltán Kiss told public news channel M1 that the team is currently propagating the virus variant to see whether the blood serum of patients recovered from the “original” variant can neutralise it. If variant N501Y turns out to be impervious to serum immune to the previous variant, the vaccine under development will have to be altered accordingly, Kiss said.
New variants of the coronavirus have been spreading rapidly in the UK, Brazil and South Africa, and have been detected in several European countries, including Hungary, Kiss said.
hungarymatters.hu
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