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Could new COVID variants undermine vaccines? Labs scramble to find out

Researchers race to determine why lineages identified in Britain and South Africa spread so quickly and whether they’ll compromise vaccines.
  1. Ewen Callaway
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As concern grows over faster-spreading variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, laboratories worldwide are racing to unpick the biology of these viruses. Scientists want to understand why variants identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa seem to be spreading so quickly, and whether they might diminish the potency of vaccines or overcome natural immunity and lead to a spate of reinfections.

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Nature 589, 177-178 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00031-0

Updates & Corrections

  • Update 08 January 2021: This story has been updated with findings from a preprint that suggests the Pfizer–BioNtech vaccine is effective against a mutated form of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

References

  1. Xie, X. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.07.425740 (2021).

  2. Tegally, H. et al. Preprint at medRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.21.20248640 (2020).

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