double mutant translate to double troublethere were fears that if the two mutations came together the effect would add up or that they may amplify each otherhowever the preliminary studies did not give any such indication npr reported that gupta and his team found that the double mutant behaved a lot like the single mutant in response to antibodies created by the pfizer vaccinethere didnt seem to be the addition of one mutant on top of the other gupta said and that was really quite important because that assumption has caused panicsimultaneously npr reported that researchers at emory university performed similar studies with antibodies taken from 15 people who were vaccinated with either the pfizer or moderna shots they found that the antibodies could still neutralize the b1617 variant but the potency of the antibodies dropped by about sevenfold on averagedespite this reduction all vaccine blood samples still maintained the ability to block the b1617 variant said immunologist mehul suthar at emory who led the studythus the findings suggest that at least the pfizer and moderna shots worked just as well against the double mutant variant as they did against the ones from south africa b1351but what about the vaccines available in india are covishield and covaxin the two vaccines currently available in the country also effective against the double mutantthe npr report quoted rakesh mishra adviser to the hyderabadbased centre for cellular molecular biology as saying that covishield can also prevent severe cases and deathsmishra said that based on experiments conducted by him and his colleagues covishield gave similar results to what other researchers have found with the pfizer and moderna vaccineswe were actually very relieved because this means this variant has not managed to resist the vaccines mishra told npr meanwhile white houses chief medical adviser dr anthony fauci had earlier said that indias homegrown vaccine covaxin was also found to be effective against the double mutant strain this is something we are still gaining data on but most recent data looking at convalescent sera of covid19 cases in people who received covaxin it was found to neutralise the 617 variant fauci had saidan indian council of medical research icmr study had also found that covaxin was able to neutralise the double mutant straincovaxin neutralises against multiple variants of sarscov2 and effectively neutralises the double mutant strain as well it had tweeted last month