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COVID-19 vac­cines devel­oped by Pfiz­er and Mod­er­na appear to offer sig­nif­i­cant­ly less anti­body pro­tec­tion against the high­ly con­ta­gious vari­ant that emerged in South Africa, new stud­ies show.

The stud­ies, pub­lished Wednes­day in the New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine, indi­cat­ed that both vac­cines elicit­ed much low­er lev­els of neu­tral­iz­ing anti­bod­ies against the new strain, com­pared to the ini­tial SARS-CoV­‑2 virus.

For the Pfiz­er study, sci­en­tists devel­oped an engi­neered virus that con­tained the same muta­tions car­ried on the spike por­tion of the South African vari­ant, known as B.1.351.

Researchers test­ed the engi­neered virus against blood tak­en from peo­ple who had been given …