Pfizer’s Coronavirus Vaccine Likely to Work Against Rapidly-Spreading Variants
A new study offers some reassurance that Pfizer and BionTech’s COVID-19 vaccine is likely to protect patients against two new variants of the COVID-19 virus: one now circulating rapidly in the U.K. and the other in South Africa.
Since the emergence of these new variants, scientists have expressed confidence that currently authorized vaccines would work against them — but cautioned that more studies were needed to be sure.
Both new variants — the result of random copying errors in the virus’s genetic code — appear to be easier to transmit, but not more deadly. Working in a laboratory, researchers modified a version of the coronavirus to include a specific copying error that’s believed to make the U.K. and South African variants more contagious.
