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AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine is worth using in areas hit by mutated strains of the virus, World Health Organization officials and partners said, countering concerns about reduced effectiveness that arose in a recent test. There’s evidence the vaccine AstraZeneca developed with the University of Oxford could provide meaningful protection against severe disease caused by the highly infectious variant that emerged in South Africa, called B.1.351, according to Kate O’Brien, who heads the WHO’s vaccination division. The global health agency is preparing to decide on an emergency-use listing for Astra-Oxford shots made in India and South Korea. (Gretler and Cohen, 2/8)

World Health Organization officials expressed confidence that AstraZeneca PLC’s Covid-19 vaccine can prevent severe cases of the disease, as well as hospitalizations and deaths, despite questions about the protection it offers against a fast-spreading strain of the virus first detected in South Africa. The remarks followed a release of information over the weekend about a small clinical trial of the vaccine in South Africa, which prompted the government there to halt a planned rollout of the shot. (Steinhauser and Strasburg, 2/8)

South Africa is considering giving a COVID-19 vaccine that is still in the testing phase to health workers, after suspending the rollout of another shot that preliminary data indicated may be only minimally effective against the mutated form of the virus dominating the country. The country was scrambling Monday to come up with a new vaccination strategy after it halted use of the AstraZeneca vaccine — which is cheaper and easier to handle than some others and which many had hoped would be crucial to combatting the pandemic in developing countries. Among the possibilities being considered: mixing the AstraZeneca vaccine with another one or giving Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine, which has not yet been authorized for use anywhere, to 100,000 health care workers while monitoring its efficacy against the variant. (Medrum, 2/8)

When a plane loaded with 1 million doses of vaccine produced by AstraZeneca landed in South Africa on Feb. 1, a hopeful country watched with rapt attention. Exactly a week later came the blow: A study, however limited and not yet peer-reviewed, said the vaccine provided only “minimal protection” against contracting mild to moderate infections of a new coronavirus variant that is widespread in South Africa, where it was first detected. The variant has since been found in at least 30 countries. The news was a blow not only to South Africans but to billions of people whose governments are relying on the vaccine developed at Oxford University and made by AstraZeneca. (Bearak, Booth and Wroughton, 2/8)

A study today in Nature Medicine showed Pfizer's mRNA vaccine, the first vaccine approved in the United States for use against COVID-19, neutralized three variants of the virus, including the B117 strain first identified in the United Kingdom, and two new variants first confirmed in South Africa. The mutations tested included the N501Y from the United Kingdom and South Africa, the 69/70-deletion + N501Y + D614G from United Kingdom; and E484K + N501Y + D614G from South Africa. (2/8)

It is not yet clear whether the world needs a new set of vaccines to fight different variants of the novel coronavirus but scientists are working on new ones so there is no reason for alarm, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group said on Tuesday. ... “There are definitely new questions about variants that we’re going to be addressing. And one of those is: do we need new vaccines?,” Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, told BBC radio. “I think the jury is out on that at the moment, but all developers are preparing new vaccines so if we do need them, we’ll have them available to be able to protect people.” (Faulconbridge and Holton, 2/9)