Re­sis­tance mu­ta­tions found in those re­ceiv­ing GSK and Vir’s mon­o­clon­al for Delta, new re­search shows

While the Delta vari­ant is in the rearview mir­ror now, new re­search from Aus­tralia shows how some peo­ple de­vel­oped sotro­vimab-re­sis­tant mu­ta­tions fol­low­ing in­fu­sions with the Glax­o­SmithK­line and Vir mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body when they were sick with Covid-19.

The mu­ta­tions, sim­i­lar to what’s seen with an­tibi­otics, can be trans­ferred be­tween peo­ple and re­duces the ef­fec­tive­ness of the mAb.

“These da­ta show the per­sis­tence of vi­able SARS-CoV-2 in pa­tients af­ter sotro­vimab in­fu­sions and the rapid de­vel­op­ment of spike gene mu­ta­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with high-lev­el sotro­vimab re­sis­tance in vit­ro,” the Aus­tralian re­searchers wrote in the New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine in cor­re­spon­dence pub­lished Thurs­day evening, adding:

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