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by rolph 1814 days ago
87.9% efficacy

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.22.21257658v...

1 comments

That's for the Indian variant? How does it compare to the previous variants? Is it noticeably worse or similar?
It’s basically identical to other real world studies which have shown 89-91% effectiveness in the general population against the prevailing mixture of variants this winter and spring in the US and the UK. Which is in turn only slightly lower than the reported 94-95% effectiveness in the clinical trial environment last summer. Long story short it’ll be a long time before the mRNA vaccines aren’t effective.
efficacy is similar due to conservation of the receptor binding domain[RBD] of spike protien[S] the RBDab is billed as the gold standard neutralizing antibody as when it binds to RBD of the S protien, that particular S protien is no longer able to bind to its ligand [ACE2]

should we see a variant that escapes this RBD Antibody mechanism then there will be a possibility of escape, and concommitant requirement to tweak the vaccine antigen.