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U.S. biotech company Moderna Inc. said on Wednesday its COVID-19 vaccine should be protective against variants of the novel coronavirus recently detected in Britain, based on data to date.
“We will perform additional testing of the vaccine in the coming weeks to confirm this expectation,” the Massachusetts-based company added in its statement.
It also said it has tested sera from animals and humans vaccinated with its COVID-19 vaccine against a number of previous variants of the virus that have emerged since the first outbreak of the pandemic, and found that it “remained just as effective ”.
A scientist works in the Moderna lab in Cambridge, MA, February 28, 2020 (The Boston Globe / Getty / Kyodo)
Moderna’s two-dose vaccine was put into practice in the United States on Monday, following the deployment of a vaccine made by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech SE.
But the news has been overshadowed by concerns over new strains of the virus being reported in Britain.
Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a new technology called messenger RNA or mRNA.
While traditional vaccines introduce a weakened or inactivated germ into the human body to trigger an immune response, mRNA vaccines instruct cells to make a harmless “spike protein” that resembles that found in the new coronavirus.
The immune system then detects the protein and begins to build an immune response and make antibodies to protect against future infection.
Canadian health authorities have also approved the use of the Moderna vaccine. The American company, meanwhile, has reached an agreement with the Japanese government to provide the Asian country with enough doses of the vaccine for 25 million people.
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