There were studies done on the recently found new variant of the Corona Virus which was the South African variant. The study found that this variant is far more resistant to the existing vaccine which are Pfizer and Moderna than initially believed. This only makes matters dangerous as the South African variant much like the UK variant is 50% more contagious than the original strain.
This study was made available to the public and it does boast of startling findings, but the most important was that they found that Moderna’s vaccine was 12.4% less effective against the South African strain and the Pfizer vaccine was only 10.3% less effective against the South African strain. The only good news that came from this study is that both vaccines are holding up well against the UK strain.
The authors of this study stated that “Taken together, the overall findings are worrisome, particularly in light of recent reports that both Novavax and Johnson & Johnson vaccines showed a substantial drop in efficacy in South Africa.” They went on to add by saying “Such considerations require that we stop virus transmission as quickly as is feasible, by redoubling our mitigation measures and by expediting vaccine rollout.”
The authors go on to state that if the South African variant continues to spread and is eventually accompanied by even more mutations, there’s a risk that researchers will be perpetually chasing an ever-evolving form of the coronavirus, similar to how we currently battle different influenza strains every year.
To that end, the vaccination rollout in the US has continued to pick up steam with each passing week. After an embarrassingly slow start, the vaccination rate in the US currently stands at about 2.2 million doses per day. To date, 60 million Americans have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose while about 31.5 million people have received two doses.
