Oxford Covid vaccine has 10% efficacy against South African variant, study suggests | The Guardian |

Scientists at the University of Texas medical branch collected antibody-containing blood plasma from 20 people who recently had two shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab.

In tests, the antibodies were on average 81% as effective at neutralising the engineered virus as they were at blocking older variants. The results, reported in Nature Medicine, suggest the variant's key mutation, known as E484K, does not dramatically undermine the vaccine's protection.

Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 spike 69/70 deletion, E484K and N501Y variants by BNT162b2 vaccine-elicited sera | Nature |

Since the previously reported studies were conducted, rapidly spreading variants of SARS-CoV-2 have arisen in the UK, SA and other regions. These variants have multiple mutations in their spike glycoproteins, which are key targets of virus-neutralizing antibodies.

The emerged spike mutations have raised concerns of vaccine efficacy against these new strains. The goal of this study was to examine the effect of several key spike mutations from the UK and SA strains on BNT162b2 vaccine-elicited neutralization.