the South African variant, B.1.351, showed that it can escape the antibodies in the blood of previously infected persons. That suggested that therapies using monoclonal antibodies—the treatment President Trump received—could fail. The authors of the study underscored the implications for the effectiveness of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines: “These data highlight the prospect of reinfection with antigenically distinct variants and may foreshadow reduced efficacy of current spike-based vaccines.” Indeed, the Novavax vaccine, while robustly effective in trials, was significantly less so when tested against
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