Two COVID-19 vaccines appear to work well against a rapidly spreading coronavirus variant that arose in California, but less effective against a variant that first emerged in South Africa, researchers report. "The good news is the California variant does not appear to be a problem for our current vaccines," said study author David Montefiori, director of the Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine Research and Development at Duke University, in Durham, N.C…. When the blood samples from people who received both doses of the Moderna vaccine were exposed to the California variant, the vaccine remained strongly protective. The Novovax vaccine also performed well against it…. While researchers didn't test the Pfizer vaccine, they said the findings would be comparable to those for the Moderna vaccine because both use similar technology.