COVID vaccines may still work on Brazil variant: Oxford

LONDON

The current coronavirus vaccines could work against the Brazilian variant better than first expected, Oxford University said on Thursday.

Oxford developed a COVID-19 vaccine alongside British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.

The top British university studied the impact of natural and vaccine-induced antibodies on different COVID-19 strains by comparing blood samples from people with natural antibodies having recovered from the illness against those with antibodies from the Oxford and Pfizer vaccines.

Newer coronavirus strains are widely accepted to be at least somewhat more resistant to vaccines than the original strain.

The research has not been peer-reviewed, but showed that the Brazilian variant was less resistant to vaccine-induced antibodies than first feared.

In a statement, Oxford University said: “These data suggest that natural and vaccine-induced antibodies can still neutralise these variants, but at lower levels.”

“Importantly, the P1 'Brazilian' strain may be less resistant to these antibodies than first feared.”

The research found there was nearly a three-fold reduction in the level of virus neutralization by vaccine-generated antibodies against the Brazil variant, which is a similar level of reduction to the Kent variant.

The South Africa variant is much more resistant to COVID-19 vaccines, with a nine-fold reduction in Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, and a 7.6-fold reduction in Pfizer/BioNTech.