The American biotech company Moderna announced today that its Covid-19 vaccine remains effective against the British and South African variants of the new coronavirus, considered more contagious.
In a statement, citing preliminary results, Moderna maintains that its vaccine “maintains neutralizing activity” for SARS-CoV-2 variants originating in the United Kingdom and South Africa, and already detected in Portugal.
According to the biotechnology company, "the two-dose regimen" of the vaccine is expected to "protect against the emerging strains detected to date."
The statement said that, for the British variant, there was "no significant impact on neutralizing titers [antibody levels]".
As for the South African variant, “a six-fold reduction in neutralizing titers was observed”, but such levels “remain above” those that “are expected to constitute a protection”.
Moderna adds, however, that “just in case” it is developing a “booster variant” of its vaccine against the South African strain and that it will test “an additional booster dose” of the vaccine to assess “the ability to further increase neutralizing titers against emerging strains”.
The results released today, which still need peer review for scientific publication, were obtained from an 'in vitro' study that analyzed, from human and monkey blood serum, the ability of the vaccine to induce formation. of potent neutralizing antibodies against the two variants.
Both the people, eight in all, aged between 18 and 55, and the monkeys were inoculated with two doses (the recommended ones) of Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine.
The work was done by the biotechnology company in collaboration with the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States.
“We are excited about these new data, which reinforce our confidence that Moderna's vaccine against covid-19 should provide protection against these newly detected variants,” Moderna's boss Stéphane Bancel said, quoted in the statement.
Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine was approved for conditioned use in the European Union in early January. Portugal received the first 8.400 doses of this vaccine in the middle of the same month.
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