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The Moderna vaccine will continue to work in newer Covid-19 strains from the UK and South Africa, based on test results.
The biotech giant said the study “had no significant impact” on the effectiveness of the vaccine against the UK strain.
A six-fold reduction in neutralizing titers was found in the South African variant, but the company insists the levels remain high enough to be protective.
The study was conducted in collaboration with the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Two doses of the jab are expected to be sufficient to protect the public against all strains detected to date.
The company said it continues to conduct tests in an attempt to “further increase neutralization titers” against all emerging strains.
Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, said: “As we seek to defeat the Covid-19 virus, which has created a global pandemic, we believe it is imperative to be proactive as the virus evolves.
“We are encouraged by this new data, which reinforces our confidence that the Modern Covid-19 vaccine should protect against these newly detected variants.
“Out of great caution and taking advantage of the flexibility of our mRNA platform, we are advancing an emerging booster candidate variant against the variant first identified in the Republic of South Africa in the clinic to determine if it will be more effective to increase titers of this and potential variants. future “.
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