The effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccine developed by the British pharmacological company AstraZeneca in cooperation with the University of Oxford was low from the COVID-19 strain found in South Africa. The Financial Times reports.
The publication conducted a study on two thousand people, as a result, it turned out that an injection of the vaccine from AstraZeneca probably does not provide protection for mild to moderate disease caused by a virus from South Africa.
At the same time, the effectiveness of the drug against a severe form of the disease and its effect on mortality when infected with the South African strain have not yet been investigated.
However, the publication emphasizes that the study may be incomplete, since its scale was not too large. According to the head of the South African Genome Surveillance System, Tulio de Oliveira, the findings have become a wake-up call that requires more control over COVID-19 around the world.
A new strain of coronavirus was discovered in South Africa on December 18. Scientists have identified a previously unknown species of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the country. The Minister of Health of South Africa stressed that the second wave of coronavirus in the country is probably associated with this particular mutation of the disease.