LAUSR

In this article of EBioMedicine, Viviana Simon and colleagues show that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) mRNA vaccine remains effective against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern/interest in neutralisation and binding activities of serological tests [1]. This provides in vitro laboratory evidence of the continued efficacy of vaccines against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. As the COVID-19 outbreak continued, mutations occurred in the genome of SARS-CoV-2 lead to the emergence of various variants. Amino acid variation in functional proteins such as spike protein leads to changes in viral properties, especially immunity. WHO has named and strongly alerted variants of concern (VOC) and variants of interest (VOI) based on the monitoring and tracking of changes in viral transmissibility, severity and/or immunity. The most effective way to control and end the COVID-19 pandemic is to get a safe and effective vaccination. Although a wide range of vaccines against COVID-19 are available, with more than 100 vaccine products in clinical development from a range of different platforms, almost all of them were developed based on the original strain. The emergence of highly transmitted and immunologically altered variants, such as Delta, Beta, has raised concerns about the effectiveness of current vaccines. The findings presented in Viviana Simon group's work tested the neutralisation activity of 15 mRNA-1273 vaccine and 15 BNT162b2 vaccine immunized sera against seven SARS-CoV-2 isolates derived from New York. Neutralisation reduction was found to be stronger against Lambda subvariant, followed by Beta and Alpha+E484K. And in the receptor binding domain and spike binding assay, vaccine immunized sera showed little change in binding activities. There is growing evidence that despite a slight decline in the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing infection by variants, more than 90% effective