A look at the workings of the Pfizer vaccine in the real world suggests that it may not be as effective against the coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa.
A recently released study looked at about 400 people in Israel who tested positive for COVID-19 for about two weeks or more after receiving one or two doses of the vaccine, according to Reuters and Al Jazeera.
The patients were compared with the same number of non-vaccinated patients with COVID-19.
The variant, identified as B.1.351, was responsible for approximately 1% of all COVID-19 cases in the study.
However, the percentage of patients with the B.1.351 variant among the group that received two doses of the vaccine was eight times higher than the percentage of the non-vaccinated group with the variant.
Approximately 5.4% of those who had COVID-19 after receiving the vaccine had the variant, while only 0.7% of the non-vaccinated group who had COVID-19 had the variant .
“We found an excessively higher percentage of the South African variant among people who were vaccinated with a second dose, compared to the group who were not vaccinated. This means that the South African variant has some protection. of the vaccine could break through, “Tel Aviv University Adi Stern told Reuters.
Researchers warn about the small sample size, as the variant first identified in South Africa is currently not very common in Israel. The variant first identified in Britain is predominant in the country.
The study was published on the medRxiv website and has not yet been reviewed by peers.
More than 50% of Israel’s 9.3 million people received it both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.