Existing COVID vaccines may protect against Brazil strain: Study

Researchers say producing vaccines against the South Africa variant should be the ‘greatest priority for developers’.

Existing vaccines may protect against the Brazilian variant of the coronavirus, according to a University of Oxford study which also highlighted how a variant first found in South Africa poses the biggest headache for vaccine makers. Coronavirus variants with specific mutations to the spike protein are of concern because scientists worry they will reduce the efficacy of vaccines, as well as immunity gained from prior infection. The scientists used blood samples from people with antibodies generated by both COVID-19 infection and the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that are being rolled out in the United Kingdom.