Russian Vaccines Ensure Protection Against New COVID-19 Variant AY.4.2 - Rospotrebnadzor

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st October, 2021) The coronavirus vaccines currently used in Russia are also effective against the new COVID-19 Delta strain variant, AY.4.2, Kamil Khafizov, the head of the scientific group for the development of new methods for diagnosing human diseases at Russian consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor's Central Research Institute of Epidemiology, said.

Earlier, scientists in the UK reported the spread of a more contagious variant of the coronavirus than the usual Delta strain. According to experts from the Sanger Institute in Cambridge and the Genetics Institute at University College London, the new AY.

4.2 variant could be 10-15 percent more infectious than the usual Delta strain. If the data is confirmed, the variant may become the most infectious since the beginning of the virus spread.

"The vaccines are effective enough against this version of the virus... It is not so different to dramatically change the ability of binding to antibodies. And judging by the fact that it has mutations in the S-protein, then it is most likely more associated with contagiousness, and not with the severity of the disease," Khafizov told reporters.