Covid-19 Live Updates: AstraZeneca Shot Found to Be Protective Against Variant First Seen in U.K.

Here’s what you need to know:

Administering the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine in Basingstoke, England, on Thursday.
Credit…Pool photo by Andrew Matthews

The Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford protected people against a new, more contagious coronavirus variant at similar levels to the protection it offered against other lineages of the virus, Oxford researchers said in a paper released on Friday.

The paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, said that the vaccine had 74.6 percent efficacy against the new variant, which was first detected in Britain and is known as B.1.1.7. That was similar, though slightly lower, than its efficacy against other lineages of the virus.

The encouraging, albeit preliminary, findings suggest that all five of the leading…

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