OK, a couple of comments and my immediate reaction to the presentation in South Africa that is about to set Twitter alight. This isn't the moment and this isn't the data to warrant any kind of heavy panic reaction.

This is a global problem, sure. But to be selfish for one moment, what matters in the UK this winter is that sera from those immunised with the Astra vaccine neutralise B117. I have said this before and that didn't change at all.

There is also the *critical* point that despite these in vitro results pointing to immune escape, there is still no significant reinfection with this variant (discussed in this presentation). There are explanations for this, one being T cell responses (not testable with serum).

It's possible that you are better protected from immune escape by a history of natural infection as opposed to a vaccine, because the antigenic diversity sampled by the immune system during SARS-CoV-2 is significantly broader than an S-protein-coding vaccine...

BUT.... we need to wait to see how different vaccines perform against these variants. This data will arrive soon from BioNTech. PHE will announce the data at some stage also for AZ-immunised sera and B117 neutralisation, I expect. https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1348675762937868298?s=20

If you want to watch, the important aspects of this presentation are summarised from 57:00-1:03:30(ish).
Any thoughts... pile in.

Listen to 1:19:15.
I agree with Willem Hanekom.

I've had a lot of time to think about these variants and honestly, until we start seeing confirmed infections in fully vaccinated people I'm going to remain relaxed about this.