Brazil detects virus variant similar to South African

Pfizer vaccine 91% effective in updated data

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil has detected a new COVID-19 variant that is similar to the one first seen in South Africa, the head of Sao Paulo’s Butantan institute said on Wednesday, as Latin America’s biggest country notched another record daily death toll.

Butantan President Dimas Covas said the patient with the variant had no history of travel to South Africa. The South African variant has alarmed public health experts as there are questions of how effective current vaccines are against it. Brazil is grappling with its own homegrown variant, called P1, which appears to be fueling a record-breaking run of infections.

“It is a variant similar to that of South Africa, although there is no history of travel or contact with travelers from South Africa,” said Covas, whose biomedical institute is run by Sao Paulo state. “There is a possibility that it is an evolution of our P1 towards this mutation in South Africa.”

Pfizer Inc and BioNTech said on Thursday their COVID-19 vaccine is around 91% effective at preventing the disease, citing updated trial data that included participants inoculated for up to six months.

The shot was also 100% effective in preventing illness among trial participants in South Africa, where a new variant called B1351 is dominant, although that rate was derived from a relatively small number of nine infections observed there, which were all in the placebo group, Pfizer said.

While the new overall efficacy rate of 91.3% is lower than the 95% originally reported in November for its 44,000-person trial, a number of variants have become more prevalent around the world since then.

Brazil reported a daily record of 3,869 new COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, with 90,638 new coronavirus cases in the prior 24 hours, the Health Ministry said.

Brazil is grappling with the worst phase of its outbreak, which has already killed more than 321,000 Brazilians, the world’s second-highest death toll after the United States.