South African variant may evade protection from Pfizer vaccine, Israeli study says
(Moderna is testing it's South African booster now on it's original study group and Pfizer is working on modifying it's vaccine - luckily the African Strain is not widespread in many areas.)
The study, released ahead of peer review on the medRxiv website on Friday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease.
It matched age and gender, among other characteristics.
The South African variant, B.1.351, was found to make up about 1% of all the COVID-19 cases across all the people studied, according to the study by Tel Aviv University and Israels largest healthcare provider, Clalit.
But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variants prevalence rate was eight times higher than among the unvaccinated - 5.4% versus 0.7%.
This suggests the vaccine is less effective against the South African variant, compared with the original coronavirus and a variant first identified in Britain that has come to comprise nearly all COVID-19 cases in Israel, the researchers said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-israel-study/south-african-variant-may-evade-protection-from-pfizer-vaccine-israeli-study-says-idUSKBN2BX0J