3 Evasion of immunity

As new variants of SARS-CoV2 emerged a major concern was that any new variant would completely evade the immune response produced by infection or by vaccination. The loss of immunity would lead to faster spreading infection, more serious disease, the necessity to reformulate vaccines and require new vaccination programmes.

As suggested previously, the changes that have occurred in the spike protein have allowed new variants to avoid recognition by antibodies. This is seen most dramatically with the monoclonal antibodies that are used therapeutically.