Israeli Study Finds That South African COVID-19 Variant Can “Break Through” Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine

Pfizer and BioNTech have been having a good year.

Its vaccine was found to have an astonishing efficacy of 97% the same time AstraZeneca’s came under fire for heightening risks for blood clots; it was proven effective against new variants the same time Brazil slapped Sinovac with a disappointing 50.4% efficacy rate; and it’s basically getting unlimited orders from all countries around the world.

It’s almost like they found a cheat code or something.

But here might be a harbinger of bad news no one wants to hear: an Israeli study just concluded that the South African COVID-19 variant may be able to resist protection accorded by the vaccine, according to The Straits Times.

Oops.

Variant More Common in Those Vaccinated

The study, which was released on Saturday (10 Apr), was a comparison study between people who had contracted COVID-19 after a full course of the vaccine, and the same number of unvaccinated patients. Differences between age and gender among the two groups were well controlled.

Yes, you can still be infected after vaccination—in case you weren’t following Sunday (11 Apr)’s news.

It found that the South African variant—with the exceptionally memory-friendly name B.1.351—made up 0.7% of all cases in the unvaccinated group but 5.4% in the vaccinated group, almost 7 times more prevalent. 

This notable difference may mean that the South African COVID-19 variant is better able to break through defenses accorded by the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and infect someone, as compared to the original strain.

But before you rush to your nearest FairPrice for your most crucial needs, take comfort in knowing that there are significant limitations to the study.

As the researchers themselves noted, only a few people out of the 400 were infected with the South African variant, which remained rare in Israel. This meant that the differences in proportions could be due to a statistical anomaly, rather than any actual inadequacies of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The research also only looked at people who had already been infected with COVID-19, without considering how many people the vaccine was able to protect. It is therefore not an indication of how effective the vaccine is in protecting people from infection. 

There have been previous studies that reported a reduced effectiveness against the South African variant, but they concluded that the vaccine was still highly effective overall.

In essence, getting vaccinated remains the most robust way to protect yourself from COVID-19. 

Certainly more so than wearing a mask over your eyes.

What Are These Variants?

Yeah, we have more than one kind of COVID-19 virus to deal with now.

Coronaviruses are exceptionally prone to mutations as they replicate due to their unstable RNA, and they create new variants of themselves all the time, as CNA explains.

Most variants are not of concern and are often eliminated by natural selection, but some contain mutations in key areas of the virus that can make them more infectious or severe.

An example is the B117 variant, which was first detected in the United Kingdom. It is a significantly more contagious strain, up to 70% more transmissible according to British authorities and now the dominant strain in the UK and the US. 

The P.1 variant (probably the easiest name to remember) from Brazil, too, is now ravaging the healthcare system there and caused at least 60,000 fatalities in March alone.

New variants may also gain a greater virulence, which means that they would be more deadly to those unfortunate enough to be infected.

Most worryingly, however, is that mutations can possibly make it harder for antibodies to bind to viruses, compromising immunity and threatening to undo vaccination drives countries around the world have painstakingly advanced. 

The B.1.351 variant from South Africa, discussed earlier in this article, has already proven to weaken significantly the protection accorded by the AstraZeneca vaccine. Natural immunity after a real infection, however, seems to hold strong against all variants known so far.

Not saying you should purposefully get yourself infected. Though if you do, we’d like to meet you. Or not.

Feature Image: Siraj Ahmad / Shutterstock.com