The new Covid-19 variant identified in South Africa can evade the antibodies that attack it in treatments using blood plasma from previously recovered patients, and may reduce the efficacy of the current line of vaccines, according to scientists.
The Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is likely to protect against a more infectious variant of the virus discovered in Britain which has spread around the world, according to results of further lab tests.
Previous infection with the coronavirus may offer less protection against the new variant first identified in South Africa, although scientists hope that vaccines will still work.
Leading U.S. infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci said he foresees America achieving enough collective Covid-19 immunity through vaccinations to regain “some semblance of normality” by autumn 2021, despite early setbacks in the vaccine rollout.
The World Health Organization cautioned against major alarm over a new, highly infectious variant of the coronavirus that has emerged in Britain, saying this was a normal part of a pandemic’s evolution.
A Covid-19 vaccine being developed by CSL Ltd. and the University of Queensland was scrapped after numerous vaccine recipients reported receiving false positives on certain HIV tests, according to the Wall Street Journal.
AstraZeneca and Oxford University have more work to do to confirm whether their Covid-19 vaccine can be 90% effective, peer-reviewed data published in The Lancet showed, potentially slowing its eventual rollout in the fight against the pandemic.
Ten Covid-19 vaccines could be available by the middle of 2021 if they win regulatory approval, but their inventors need patent protection, the head of the global pharmaceutical industry group said.
Novavax Inc. is on track to begin a delayed U.S.-based, late-stage study of the company’s experimental coronavirus vaccine during November
Federal health regulators decided to allow the resumption of the U.S. trial of a leading Covid-19 vaccine candidate from AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the matter and materials reviewed by it.
