The SARS-CoV-2 mutations versus vaccine effectiveness: New opportunities to new challenges

Abstract

Graphical abstract

China's COVID-19 Control Strategy and Its Impact on the Global Pandemic

“…On November 17, 2021, the People's Court of Pingxiang City, Guangxi, held a court hearing on the case of Chinese citizen Cao for the crime of obstructing frontier health and quarantine and sentenced him to 2 years of imprisonment with a probation period of 3 years and a fine of RMB 200,000. On October 26, 2021, Anhui Lu'an reported a case involving two doctors who were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment for 1 year and 3 months for treating patients with fever without authorization (10)(11)(12)(13)(14).…”

“…In China, although the pandemic is basically under control, repeated waves have challenged people's psychological wellbeing. People's mental health has undergone changes at different stages of the pandemic (10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15). Since the pandemic has repeatedly occurred, people have become prone to fatigue, paralysis, carelessness, and even blind optimism.…”

“…These measures are aimed at eradicating COVID-19 and maintaining disease-free conditions. Some countries do not treat patients after diagnosis in hopes that the patient's immune system will be enough to heal the individual or withhold medical care until patients are very ill and have possibly infected a number of others, resulting in a worsening of the disease ( 10 ). China's zero-tolerance policy is considered excessive by some countries.…”

“…Two doses were 85% (81-89%) effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections, 97% (97-98%) for symptomatic COVID-19, 93% (89-96%) for hospitalization, 96% (93-98%) for ICU admissions, and 95% (92-98%) for COVID-19-related death. Thus, China has faced large challenges in controlling new waves of COVID-19 (8)(9)(10).…”

Would New SARS-CoV-2 Variants Change the War Against COVID-19?

“…Another example is given by the Omicron variant, which was shown to systematically escape neutralization by the existing vaccines [14,15]. In general, accumulating evidence suggests that the existing vaccines might have limited protection against novel SARS-CoV-2 variants and infection with SARS-CoV-2 might show limited cross-variant immunity (e.g., see [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25])…”