The study referred to relates to mild and moderate illness. All the same it illustrates the problem.interesting article of attempts to future proof vaccinations for coronaviruses.
There is a bit about (and a link to a research report) the AZ vaccine apparently only being 10% affective against the South African variant. Is that feasible? It’s from Wired U.K..
https://apple.news/AoAnRXYr1TG2TLDrW9hH_hg
The Results and Conclusions from the study:
Results 2026 HIV-uninfected adults were enrolled between June 24th and Nov 9th, 2020; 1010 and 1011 received at least one dose of placebo or vaccine, respectively. Median age was 31 years. The B.1.351 variant showed increased resistance to vaccinee sera using the PSVNA and LVNA. In the primary endpoint analysis, 23/717 (3.2%) placebo and 19/750 (2.5%) vaccine recipients developed mild-moderate Covid-19; VE 21.9% (95%Confidence Interval: −49.9; 59.8). Of the primary endpoint cases, 39/42 (92.9%) were the B.1.351 variant; against which VE was 10.4% (95%CI: −76.8; 54.8) analyzed as a secondary objective. The incidence of serious adverse events was balanced between the vaccine and placebo groups.
Conclusions A two-dose regimen of ChAdOx1-nCoV19 did not show protection against mild-moderate Covid-19 due to B.1.351 variant, however, VE against severe Covid-19 is undetermined.
(Funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and South African Medical Research Council; ClinicalTrails.gov number, NCT04444674).