Study: Pfizer Shows Efficiency against New COVID-19 Variants

The Daily Mail newspaper published a few hours ago a new study showing the effect of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine against the mutated variants of the virus.

The found showed that the Pfizer vaccine showed efficiency against the new COVID-19 variants that emerged in the UK and South Africa.

Scientists from Oxford University found that the Pfizer vaccine managed to reduce the activity of the mutated virus in the body.

Furthermore, it increased the work of the immune system to produce more antibodies to fight the infection.

Previously, it was reported that the Pfizer vaccine is 95 percent effective against the earliest discovered forms of the COVID-19.

On the other hand, scientists concern that more mutated variants of the new COVID-19 strains that emerged in Brazil and South Africa could be stronger than previously tested vaccines.

A few days ago, the leading Financial Times posted the results of a new study about the efficiency of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on the new mutated COVID-19 strains such as the South Africa variant.

The study showed that Oxford/AstraZeneca didn’t appear to offer protection against mild and moderate infections caused by COVID-19 South Africa’s strain.

Clinical trials revealed that AstraZeneca’s efficiency reduced against the 501Y.V2 viral variant which is dominant in South Africa.

On the other hand, all COVID-19 vaccines so far managed to show efficiency against the B.1.1.7 variant that emerged in the UK, that’s why the variant of South Africa aroused the concerns of the researchers.

Johnson & Johnson and Novavax revealed that their vaccines were less effective against the strain in clinical trials conducted in South Africa. In trials, both vaccines offered complete protection against severe disease and death in relation to COVID-19, according to FT.