AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine and B.1.1.7

The AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine seems roughly as efficacious against illness caused by the B.1.1.7 SARS-CoV-2 variant as illness caused by non-B.1.1.7 virus, according to preprint findings posted on The Lancet. B.1.1.7 is the more transmissible variant that was first detected in the U.K. For this analysis, researchers sequenced SARS-CoV-2 genomes from a subset of trial participants who developed symptomatic or asymptomatic infection. For symptomatic COVID-19, the vaccine was 75% efficacious against B.1.1.7 and 84% efficacious against older lineages. (For asymptomatic infection, the vaccine was less efficacious against B.1.1.7 — 27% vs. 75% for other lineages.) The vaccine is authorized in the U.K. and numerous other countries but not in the U.S.

AstraZeneca-Oxford preprint on B.1.1.7 on The Lancet (not peer-reviewed)