New Evidence Suggests COVID-19 Vaccines Remain Effective Against Variants Update RequiredTo play audio, update browser or Flash plugin. A woman receives the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 at a drive-in vaccination event last week in Meerbusch, Germany. Lukas Schulze / Getty Images The emergence of new and more infectious variants of the coronavirus has raised a troubling question: Will the current crop of COVID-19 vaccine prevent these variants from causing disease? Nature suggests the answer is yes. The research was fairly straightforward. Scientists took blood from volunteers who had received the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine and looked at the levels of neutralizing antibodies, the kind that prevent a virus from entering cells.