I know you may have concerns about the new variants and whether our current vaccines will work against them. Some good news: a new lab study shows @pfizer 's vaccine offers solid protection against the variant first seen in South Africa aka B.1.351. (1/7)
Researchers tested an engineered version of the variant (B.1.351) against blood samples from people who had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (2/7)
There was a reduction in neutralizing antibody activity against the variant, but researchers said it was still enough to neutralize the virus. (3/7)
cnn.com/2021/02/17/hea…
cnn.com/2021/02/17/hea…
Separately, another team of researchers said there were similar findings with the @moderna_tx vaccine. (4/7)
nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
“Despite this reduction, neutralizing titer levels with (the variant discovered in South Africa) remain above levels that are expected to be protective,” Moderna said in a statement. (5/7)
Remember, though, these two studies were in a lab, so we still need to see how they would do in the real world. (6/7)
@JNJCares data does give us a better look at the efficacy of their vaccine in the real world -- since it was trialed when variants were circulating more widely. Importantly, J&J was still 85% effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths. (7/7) 
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