the vaccine appeared to be less effective against B.1.351, a variant first identified in South Africa.One of the new studies, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was about 90% effective at preventing any infections caused by B.1.1.7 variant, which is now widely circulating around the globe.
The study also found that while it was somewhat less effective against the B.1.351 variant, it still was 75% effective at preventing infection among those who had received two doses.
One of the study’s authors, Laith Abu-Raddad, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, told the New York Times that even with slightly reduced effectiveness against the South African.