A particular mutation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, common to the British, the South African, and the Brazilian variants, has been shown to be eight times more infectious than the original Wuhan virus, according to a study by New York University and Mt. Sinai Hospital. (A 2020 study had indicated similarly elevated levels of infectiousness with the Italian variant.) It is thought to be involved in the greater transmission of the coronavirus in the West, but it also speaks to the danger of allowing a ‘virus stew’ anywhere in the world.
Two other studies, one by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and one by the University of Texas-Galveston, addressed the South African variant, finding that both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines resulted in about a third of the antibodies as compared to use elsewhere. This would reduce efficacy somewhat, but probably not as much as the tentative AstraZeneca study showed. The mRNA technology of both companies are particularly capable of quickly fine-tuning a vaccine for various strains; but it is not clear yet if that capacity will be deployed rapidly to South Africa and elsewhere.
