This is still only a very limited study but the South African variant would be able to pierce the shield put in place in the body by the vaccine against the covid of Pfizer and BioNTech.
Released on Saturday, the study was carried out in Israel, champion of immunization, on nearly 800 people, by Tel Aviv University and Clalit, the largest of the country's four health care providers.
400 had received the first or second dose of vaccine two weeks earlier, 400 had not been vaccinated.
The researchers compared these two population groups.
The South African variant of Covid-19, the famous B.1.351, represented about 1% of the cases of contamination that appeared among all the people studied, according to the study.
"Based on general population trends, we would have expected only one case of the South African variant, but we saw eight," University of Israel professor Adi Stern told Times of Israel. Tel Aviv.
“We found a disproportionately higher rate of the South African variant in people vaccinated with a second dose, compared to the unvaccinated group.
This means that the South African variant is able, to a certain extent, to break the protection of the vaccine, ”she assured Reuters.
The much larger Pfizer study
If, by Adi Stern's own admission, the sample is still too small to draw any real conclusions, in a country where the South African variant is rare, the results of the study are nevertheless able to provide in question the assertion of Pfizer.
The American group, allied with the German BioNTech, had assured that its vaccine was 100% effective in South Africa.
According to the two laboratories, among a group of 800 volunteers in South Africa, where B.1.351 is most common, the nine people who had contracted covid had all received a placebo.
"We are announcing it to you, an updated analysis of our phase 3 clinical trial conducted in South Africa shows that our vaccine is 100% effective against this variant", even said Saturday in our columns David Lepoittevin, the "Mr. Vaccine From Pfizer-France.
In much larger populations, the efficacy of the vaccine against variants was 91%.
Almost 53% of Israel's 9.3 million people have received their two doses of Pfizer.
