South African Variant Can ‘Break Through’ Pfizer Vaccine, Israeli Study Says

South African Variant Can ‘Break Through’ Pfizer Vaccine, Israeli Study Says
A health worker of the Maccabi Health vaccination centre administer doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine inside the parking lot of the Givatayim mall in Israel's Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv on Jan. 26, 2021. Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
Reuters
Updated:

JERUSALEM—The coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa can “break through” Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine to some extent, a real-world data study in Israel found, though its prevalence in the country is low and the research has not been peer-reviewed.

The study, released April 10, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease. It matched age and gender, among other characteristics.