A study today in
Nature Medicine showed Pfizer's mRNA vaccine, the first vaccine approved in the United States for use against COVID-19, neutralized three variants of the virus, including the B117 strain first identified in the United Kingdom, and two new variants first confirmed in South Africa.
The mutations tested included the N501Y from the United Kingdom and South Africa, the 69/70-deletion + N501Y + D614G from United Kingdom; and E484K + N501Y + D614G from South Africa.
To conduct the study, University of Texas Medical Branch researchers engineered three COVID-19 viruses with the spike mutations from the variants. They then measured neutralization geometric mean titers (GMTs) against the variants in 20 samples of human sera from subjects who had been vaccinated with Pfizer's two-dose vaccine 2 to 4 weeks earlier.