Combining antigenic data from public sources gives an early indication of the immune escape of emerging virus variants

TL;DR

Combining early antigenic data from multiple sources can quickly show how much a new virus variant escapes immunity, helping public health responses.

Contribution

Demonstrates that aggregating early, diverse data can reliably track immune escape of emerging variants.

Findings

Mean titer fold change for BA.1 stabilized after 15 days of data in twice-vaccinated individuals.

Antigenic maps became reliable after one month of data collection.

Early data aggregation improved confidence in immune escape measurements.

Abstract

The rapid spread of the Omicron BA.1 (B.1.1.529.1) SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2) variant in 2021 resulted in international efforts to quickly assess its escape from immunity generated by vaccines and previous infections. Numerous laboratories published BA.1 neutralization data as preprints and reports. We collated this data in real time and regularly presented updates of the aggregated results in US, European and WHO research and advisory settings. Here, we retrospectively analyzed the accuracy of these aggregations from 85 different sources published during a time period from 2021/12/08 up to 2022/08/14. We found that the mean titer fold change from wild type-like variants to BA.1, a standard measure of a variant’s immune escape, remained stable after the first 15 days of data reporting in people who were twice vaccinated, and incoming data increased the confidence in this quantity. Further, it is possible to build reliable, stable antigenic maps from this collated data already after one month of incoming data. We here demonstrate that combining early reports from variable, independent sources can rapidly indicate a new virus variant’s immune escape and can therefore be of immense benefit for public health.

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