An old COVID-19 variant called A.30—which is exceedingly rare—“efficiently evades” antibodies induced by the Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines, according to a team of scientists in Germany. Only five cases of the A.30 variant have been reported so far worldwide, according to the COVID-19 variant tracking network GISAID. Three of these were in Angola, and one case was detected in both the United Kingdom and Sweden. It hasn’t been listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a variant of interest or concern, likely due to its low prevalence. Researchers from Göttingen, Germany, analyzed the variant that was first detected in several patients in Angola and Sweden in the spring, which “likely originated in Tanzania.” They compared it to the Beta and Eta COVID-19 variants. “A.30 exhibits a cell line preference not observed for other viral variants and efficiently evades neutralization by antibodies elicited by” the two COVID-19 vaccines, the researchers said in …