Very good news on #Novavax vaccine in UK trial - reduced efficacy in South Africa (50-60%) not so great news (1) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55850352

Interesting as this vaccine trial was able to look at variants that emerged in UK and South Africa - so good to start getting results in the field about efficacy (2)

Another way to look at impact of variants on vaccines is lab tests - studying levels of neutralising antibodies - and results of these starting to come out (3)

On Monday #Moderna announced that, in terms of antibodies, its vaccine was effective for variant in UK (B.1.1.7) - but there was 6-fold decrease in antibodies for SA variant (501Y.P2), although the company said vaccine still had sufficient protection

Yesterday Pfizer said that its vaccine was effective for variant in UK - but there was a 1.41-fold decrease in neutralising antibodies for variant in SA, although again the company said vaccine still had sufficient protection.

Haven't yet seen similar tests yet for AZ vaccine - will be interesting to see what comes out. All companies though are talking about making changes to vaccines wrt variants - or making boosters. Luckily this is pretty straightforward to do (7)

For a bit more about variants and mutations - we did a mini explainer for #BBCNewsTen looking at why N501Y mutation makes a variant more infectious - and why E484K mutation (found in variant in South Africa and Brazil) may impact antibodies. (8)

The E484K mutation means antibodies generated from previous Covid infection not as effective - and also as we are seeing, has impact antibodies generated by vaccines (9)

The mutations that are most concerning impact the spike of the virus. Vaccines we are using at the moment all target the spike. @GuptaR_lab says we should also consider using vaccines that target other parts of the virus.

So what about keeping ahead of mutations? @AllieGreaney and colleagues have looked at every possible mutation to the spike - nearly 4,000 of them - to study the impact on antibodies. It means they can flag the most worrying changes.

So can we stop the virus from mutating? Alas - nope... BUT... our actions can have an impact - and having really high levels of virus right now isn't helping matters - as @wendybarclay11 explains