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Efficacy against severe COVID-19 infection from this variant was not assessed. The analyses being submitted in the pre-print show the vaccine had high efficacy against the original coronavirus strain in South Africa.
Researchers from the University of Witwatersrand and others in South Africa and the University of Oxford, UK found that viral neutralisation by sera induced by the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 coronavirus vaccine against the B.1.351 coronavirus variant were substantially reduced when compared with the original strain of the coronavirus.
These early data, have been submitted for scientific peer-review, appear to confirm the theoretical observation that mutations in the virus seen in South Africa will allow ongoing transmission of the virus in vaccinated populations, as has been recently reported even in those with prior infection due to earlier circulating variants.