SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma

A new mutation of COVID19 has been discovered in an South African donor. With this mutation, the spike protein changed which might render all existing vaccinations less effective or even ineffective.

Is this just one of the hundreds of variants that have been found so far but do not spread widely, or is there some reason to believe this variant is more easily spread and will become common?

This is one of the first variants that avoids our current plan of defense: antibody plasma.

At a minimum, it means that treating COVDID19 may require further tests to see if we have COVID19, or... what probably will be called COVID20 or COVID21 (for 2020 or 2021, depending on when we want to pin the "origin date" of this virus variant). I'm assuming COVID20 in my ignorance...

If COVID19 treatment doesn't work, doctors will then have to try COVID20 treatment.

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It really depends on how much COVID20 has mutated compared to COVID19, as well as how effective Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZenica, and Johnson & Johnson's vaccines are against COVID20.

They've only been tested against COVID19 (the 2019 variant). We'll have to run tests to see if our defenses are good enough for COVID20, or if we have to start the vaccine race all over again.

I'm curious, is this headline (which differs significantly from the one on the paper itself) making the common mistake of conflating "immunity" with "antibodies"? Just wondering if there is a difference between showing that the new strain is resistant to the antibodies as opposed to showing that it is likely to reinfect people who recovered from a previous strain.

Note that

1. The sera they tested this against obtained antibodies through natural infection. It's not clear whether vaccine-induced immunity is protective against this variant.

2. They only tested for neutralizing antibodies, but there is still T-Cell response which could provide protection.