COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, longevity now part of Augusta University study

An ongoing study of health care and frontline workers in Augusta and across the country could not only reveal whether COVID-19 vaccines work better than antibodies from an infection but how long those antibodies last and whether one vaccine is better than another, an investigator said.

The study at Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and four other sites around the country was already collecting samples and testing thousands of health care and frontline workers who might be regularly exposed to the virus that causes COVID-19, known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS CoV-2. But now as those workers get vaccinated, it puts the study in a position to begin comparing antibodies and protection, said Dr. Ravindra Kolhe, principal investigator for the study at AU and director of the Georgia Esoteric and Molecular Laboratory at MCG.

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Known as Project Sparta for SARS2 Seroprevalence And Respiratory Tract Assessment, the study also includes the University of Georgia at Athens, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis and the University of California, Los Angeles. The study has enrolled more than 6,000 of those workers, including about 300 in Augusta, which is looking for more workers to participate, Kolhe said. That includes people who have already tested positive, which 50 percent of the Augusta participants have, he said.

"These are frontline people," Kolhe said. "They must have been exposed at some point in the last nine months."

Originally the aim was to look at the antibodies that might result from being infected, how long they last, and whether they protected that person from being re-infected, he said.

"These are the two fundamental questions we’re still not able to answer," Kolhe said. "There are hypotheses, there are assumptions that the natural immunity stays for this many months, this many days and the naturally occurring antibodies have the capacity to prevent reinfection but there hasn’t been really a strong longitudinal study because there is no way you can do these kinds of studies in a lab."

But now as health care workers and some frontline workers like firefighters and law enforcement are getting vaccinated, it opens up the chance to compare antibodies from infection to those induced by a vaccine and whether they even produce different kinds of antibodies, he said. It would also give them a chance to see how long the vaccine continues to produce those antibodies, which is also unknown right now, Kolhe said.

"Our assumption is hopefully at least a year," he said, which would at the least put it on a par with flu vaccine that requires yearly doses.

Because the vaccines are different, and in some cases try to induce antibodies through different mechanisms, it would also allow the study to look at whether one is more effective at creating those antibodies than the other, Kolhe said. The study is already designed to measure not just whether antibodies were produced but what kind and how much, he said.

"Something like that will be extremely valuable for the next round of vaccine manufacturing," Kolhe said.

The study could also serve as a surveillance tool for different, and potentially more infectious, strains of SARS CoV-2. That has already happened in the United Kingdom, where a variant known as B. 1.1.7 is estimated to be 56% more easily spread. Kolhe is proposing sequencing the positive results of everyone in the study who gets infected after being vaccinated.

That would be helpful in "making sure that if somebody is positive post-vaccination, it is not because of vaccine failure but it is due to new strains in the community," he said. "It’s a pretty significant question we will have to closely monitor going forward about these new strains."

The current study is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases but Kolhe is hoping to get a second grant through the National Institutes of Health to sequence 10-12% of all positive tests in Georgia to also look for variant strains in the community.

Project Sparta enrolling

The AU study is still looking for participants, who would get regular monitoring for COVID-19. This includes health care and frontline workers and those who have regular exposure that would put them at risk of infection. For more information, call Reeya Patel at (762) 233-4688, or email sparta@augusta.edu, or go to: https://www.augusta.edu/mcg/projectsparta.